.. , 



. 



THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR 

Up From Slavery: An Autobiography 
The Story of the Negro 
Working With the Hands 
Character Building 
My Larger Education 



THE MAN 
FARTHEST DOWN 



A RECORD OF OBSERVATION AND 
STUDY IN EUROPE 

BY 
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON 

WITH THE COLLABORATION OF 

Robert E. Park 




Garden City New York 

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 

1912 









Copyright, 1911, by 

The Outlook Company 

Copyright, 1912, by 

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 

All rights reserved, including that of 

translation into foreign languages, 

including the Scandinavian 



!05 



£Ci.A320538 



CONTENTS 



I. Hunting the Man Farthest Down 3 

II. The Man at the Bottom in 

London ..... 21 

III. From Petticoat Lane to Skibo 

Castle 37 

IV. First Impression of Life and 

Labour on the Continent . 53 

V. Politics and Races . . 70 

VI. Strikes and Farm Labour in Italy 

and Hungary .... 86 

VII. Naples and the Land of the 

Emigrant . . . 105 

VIII. The Labourer and the Land in 

Sicily . . . . .124 

IX. Women and the Wine Harvest in 

Sicily . ' . . . 148 

X. The Church, the People and the 

Mafia 166 

XL Child Labour and the Sulphur 

Mines 192 

XII. Fiume, Budapest and the Immi- 
grant 217 

XIII. Cracow and the Polish Jew . 240 



CONTENTS 

XIV. A Polish Village in the Mountains 264 

XV. A Russian Border Village . . 276 

XVI. The Women Who Work in Europe 296 

XVII. The Organization of Country Life 

in Denmark . . . -319 

XVIII. Reconstructing the Life of the 

Labourer in London . . . 341 

XIX. John Burns and the Man Farthest 

Down in London . . .360 

XX. The Future of the Man Farthest 

Down 377 



THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 



The Man Farthest Down 

CHAPTER I 

HUNTING THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

ON THE 20th of August, 1910, I sailed 
from New York City for Liverpool, 
England. I had been given a leave of 
absence of two months from my work at Tuske- 
gee, on condition that I would spend that time 
in some way that would give me recreation and 
rest. 

Now I have found that about the only com- 
fortable and satisfactory way for me to rest is 
to find some new kind of work or occupation. 
I determined therefore to carry out a plan I 
had long had in mind of making myself ac- 
quainted with the condition of the poorer 
and working classes in Europe, particularly in 
those regions from which an ever-increasing 
number of immigrants are coming to our country 
each year. 

There have been a number of efforts made in 
recent years to divert a portion of this immi- 

3 



4 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

gration to the Southern States, and these efforts 
have been the source of wide differences of 
opinion in the South. Some people have con- 
tended that in these immigrants the Southern 
people would eventually find a substitute for 
the Negro labourer and that in this direction a 
solution for the race problem would be found. 
In some parts of the South, in fact, the exper- 
iment of using immigrants from Europe to 
take the place of the Negro on the sugar plan- 
tations and in the cotton fields has been tried. 
Naturally I have been interested in these ex- 
periments and as a consequence in the peoples 
with whom the experiments have been tried. 

The best way to get acquainted with an in- 
dividual, or with a people, according to my 
experience, is to visit them at their work and 
in their homes, and in this way find out what is 
back of them. 

So it was that I determined to make use of 
my stay in Europe to visit the people in their 
homes, to talk with them at their work, and 
to find out everything I could, not only in re- 
gard to their present situation, but also in re- 
gard to their future prospects, opportunities, 
hopes, and ambitions. 

I was curious, for one thing, to learn why it 
was that so many of these European people 
were leaving the countries in which they were 



HUNTING THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 5 

born and reared, in order to seek their fortunes 
in a new country and among strangers in a dis- 
tant part of the world, and to this question I 
think I may say that I have found, in a general 
way, an answer. One general fact, at any rate, 
in regard to this matter of emigration, I may, 
perhaps, without attempting to go into details, 
mention here at the outset. It is this: 

The majority of the people who reach this 
country as immigrants from Europe are, as 
one might expect, from the farming regions. 
They are farm labourers or tenant farmers. 
Now there exists, as I discovered, a very definite 
relation between the condition of agriculture 
and the agricultural peoples in Europe and 
the extent of emigration to this country. In 
other words, wherever in any part of Europe I 
found the condition of agriculture and the situ-" 
ation of the farm labourers at their worst, there 
I almost invariably found emigration at the 
highest. On the other hand, wherever I visited 
a part of the country where emigration had, in 
recent years, decreased, there I quite as invar- 
iably found that the situation of the man on the 
soil had improved. 

What interested me still more was the fact 
that this improvement had been, to a very 
large extent, brought about through the in- 
fluence of schools. Agricultural education has 



6 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

stimulated an intensive culture of the soil; 
this in turn has helped to multiply the number 
of small land owners and stimulate the organi- 
zation of agriculture; the resulting prosperity 
has made itself felt not only in the country but 
in the cities. For example, I found that where 
the people were prosperous and contented in the 
country, there were fewer idle, discontented, 
starving and criminal people in the cities. It 
is just as true of the poorer and labouring classes 
in Europe as it is of the Negro in the South: 
that most of the problems that arise in the 
cities have their roots in the country. 

Another matter in regard to which I hoped 
to get some first-hand information during my 
stay abroad was what I may call the European, 
as distinguished from the American, race prob- 
lem. I knew that in the south of Europe 
a number of races of widely different origin 
and characteristics had been thrown to- 
gether in close contact and in large num- 
bers, and I suspected that in this whirlpool of 
contending races and classes I should find prob- 
lems — race problems and educational problems 
— different, to be sure, but quite as compli- 
cated, difficult and interesting as in our own 
country. 

While every race and every nation must solve 
its own problems in its own way, and for that 



HUNTING THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 7 

reason it is not possible to make any very ex- 
tended comparison between the race problems 
of Europe and of America, there is, at least, a 
certain advantage in knowing that other nations 
and other peoples have problems within their 
national life which are quite as difficult and 
perplexing as our own. 

We sometimes think and speak of the con- 
ditions existing in our own country as if they 
were wholly exceptional and without parallel 
in other parts of the world. My stay in Europe 
has convinced me that we are not worse off in 
America in this respect than other peoples. 
Even if they had the choice, I do not believe, 
for instance, that the Southern people, black 
or white, would be willing to exchange their 
own troubles, such as they are, for those of 
any other nation or group of people in Europe 
or elsewhere. 

There was another thing that made the trip 
I had outlined peculiarly attractive to me: I 
believed that I would find in some parts of 
Europe peoples who in respect to education, 
opportunity, and civilization generally were 
much nearer the level of the masses of the Negro 
people in the South than I was likely to find 
anywhere in America. I believed, also, that if 
I went far enough and deep enough I should 
find even in Europe great numbers of people 



8 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

who, in their homes, in their labour, and in 
their manner of living, were little, if any, in 
advance of the Negroes in the Southern States, 
and I wanted to study at first hand, as far as 
I was able, the methods which European nations 
were using to uplift the masses of the people 
who were at the bottom in the scale of civili- 
zation. 

In view of the rather elaborate plan I have 
sketched, I am certain that some of my readers 
will wonder how I expected to be able, in the 
eight weeks to which my vacation was limited, 
to cover all the ground or get any definite or 
satisfactory notions in regard to the special 
matters which interested me in the places I pro- 
posed to visit. It seems to me, therefore, that 
I ought to say something, by way of explana- 
tion and introduction, as to just how this 
journey was made and in regard to the manner 
in which the impressions and facts which make 
up the remainder of this book were obtained. 

In the first place, it should be remembered 
that I was looking in all the different countries 
I visited for one class of facts and seeking to 
make myself familiar with merely one phase 
of life. During the whole course of this jour- 
ney, therefore, I kept myself religiously from 
the temptation that was constantly offered to 
look at anything, however important and 



HUNTING THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 9 

interesting, that did not concern itself with 
the purpose of my journey. 

In the second place, I found that, while there 
were great differences to be observed in the 
condition of the different peoples whom I visited, 
there were, also, many broad similarities. I 
found, for example, that what I learned in 
London was very useful and valuable to me, 
by way of comparison, in studying and observ- 
ing what I wanted to see in Copenhagen and in 
Denmark. I found that the things I observed 
among the peasants of Italy were a great help 
to me when I reached Austria and was able to 
compare the conditions of the farming popu- 
lation in these two different countries. The 
result was that the farther I went and the more 
familiar I became with the general situation of 
the labouring classes, the more I gained in in- 
sight and understanding of all that I saw. 

In fact I am convinced that if there is any- 
thing of special value in the studies and ob- 
servations that I have set down in this book it 
will be found, not so much in the facts them- 
selves, as in the attempt to bring them together 
into a single point of view. 

One of the first things I learned in Europe was 
the difficulty of meeting the ordinary man and 
seeing and getting acquainted with the matters 
of everyday life. I soon discovered that the 



io THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

most difficult things to see are not the sights 
that every one goes to look at, but the common- 
place things that no one sees. In order to 
carry out the plan I had in mind it was necessary 
for me to leave the ordinary beaten track of 
European travel and to plunge into regions 
which have not been charted and mapped, and 
where ordinary guides and guide-books are of 
little or no avail. 

As a matter of fact, I found less difficulty in 
this respect in London than I did on the Con- 
tinent, where it seemed to me that railways, 
guides, guide-books, and the friends I met on 
the way were in a conspiracy to compel me to 
see the things I did not want to see, and to 
prevent me from seeing all the things that I 
did want to see. 

For example, I had registered a firm resolu- 
tion, before I sailed from America, that if I 
could prevent it I would not enter a single 
palace, museum, gallery, or cathedral. I suc- 
ceeded partly in living up to this resolution. 
When I reached Cracow in Poland, however, 
my fate overtook me. I had heard a great deal 
of the ancient salt mines of Wieliczka. I knew 
that in many places women were employed side 
by side with the men in loading and carrying out 
the products of the mines, and for this reason, 
and because I had myself at one time been a 



HUNTING THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN n 

miner in America, I was very anxious to see 
how the work was carried on in Europe. 

The salt mines are about ten miles from 
Cracow, and in order to reach them I found it 
necessary to take a carriage. At the entrance 
to the mines I was surprised to find a large 
number of sightseers waiting to go down in the 
shaft, and a dark suspicion crossed my mind that 
I had made a mistake. My worst suspicions 
were confirmed when, after descending some 
two or three hundred feet below the surface, I 
found myself suddenly ushered into an ancient 
underground chapel. The place was beauti- 
fully lighted and decorated with glistening 
figures which had been hewn from solid blocks of 
salt by the pious miners who had worked in these 
mines some three or four hundred years before. 

From this chapel we again descended, through 
a dark, damp passageway, into still another 
and then another large, elaborately decorated 
and brilliantly lighted chapel. In one of these 
we ran upon a great crowd of several hundred 
people carrying lighted torches and accompanied 
by a brass band. They were peasants who were 
making an annual pilgrimage to the mine for 
the purpose of visiting the underground chapels, 
which have acquired a wide fame in the sur- 
rounding country. 

For two or three hours we wandered on from 



12 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

one large chamber to another, going deeper 
and deeper into the mine, but never coming, 
as near as I could see, any nearer to the miners. 
Finally it began to dawn upon me that so far 
from being in an actual salt mine, I was really 
in a sort of underground museum. There were 
chapels and monuments and crowds of people 
in holiday attire; there were lights and music 
and paper lanterns, but there was nothing that 
would in any way remind you of the actual 
daily life of the miners that I had come there to 
see; in fact, the only miners with whom I came 
in contact were those who acted as guides or 
played in the band. It was all very strange 
and very interesting, and there was, I learned, 
no possible means of escape. 

From w T hat I have already said I fear that 
some of my readers will feel, as a great many 
people whom I met abroad did, that in my 
journey across Europe I must have gained a 
very unfortunate and one-sided view of the 
countries and the peoples I visited. It will 
seem to them, perhaps, that I was looking for 
everything that was commonplace or bad in 
the countries I visited, and avoiding everything 
that w T as extraordinary or in any way worth 
looking at. My only excuse is that I was, in 
fact, not looking for the best, but for the worst; 
I was hunting for the man farthest down. 



HUNTING THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 13 

Most people who travel in Europe seem to 
me to be chiefly interested in two sorts of things : 
They want to see what is old, and they want to 
see what is dead. The regular' routes of travel 
run through palaces, museums, art galleries, 
ancient ruins, monuments, churches, and grave- 
yards. 

I have never been greatly interested in the 
past, for the past is something that you cannot 
change. I like the new, the unfinished and the 
problematic. My experience is that the man 
who is interested in living things must seek them 
in the grime and dirt of everyday life. To be 
sure, the things one sees there are not always 
pleasant, but the people one meets are inter- 
esting, and if they are sometimes among the 
worst they are also frequently among the best 
people in the world. At any rate, wherever 
there is struggle and effort there is life. 

I have referred to the way in which I tried 
and, to a reasonable extent, succeeded in con- 
fining my observations to a certain definite 
point of view. Aside from this I had certain 
other advantages upon this expedition in find- 
ing what I wanted to see and avoiding the things 
I did not want to see, without which I certainly 
could neither have covered the ground I did, 
nor have found my way to so many things that 
had for me special and peculiar interest. Some 



14 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

years ago I made the acquaintance, in Boston, 
of Dr. Robert E. Park, who has for some time 
past assisted me in my work at Tuskegee. At 
the time I first met him Doctor Park was in- 
terested in the movement to bring about a re- 
form of the conditions then existing in the 
Congo Free State in Africa; in fact, he was at 
that time secretary of the Congo Reform 
Association, and it was through his efforts to 
interest me in that movement that I came to 
know him. He had a notion, as he explained 
to me, that the conditions of the natives in the 
Congo, as well as in other parts of Africa, could 
not be permanently improved only through a 
system of education, somewhat similar to that 
at Hampton and Tuskegee. The Congo Re- 
form Association, as he explained, was engaged 
in a work of destruction, but what interested 
him chiefly was what should be done in the 
way of construction or reconstruction after the 
work of destruction was completed. We had 
frequent conversations upon the subject, and it 
was in this way that he finally became interested 
in the work that was being done for the Negro 
in the Southern States. Since that time he 
has spent the larger part of every year in the 
South, assisting me in my work at Tuskegee and 
using the opportunity thus offered to study what 
is called the Negro problem. The reason I 



HUNTING THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 15 

make this statement here is because Doctor 
Park was not only my companion in all of my 
trip through Europe, but he also went to Europe 
some months in advance of me and thus had 
an opportunity to study the situation and 
make it possible for me to see more in a short 
space of time than I could otherwise have 
been able to do. In this and in other ways 
he has been largely responsible for what appears 
in this book. 

For instance, it was Doctor Park who studied 
out the general plans and details of our trip. 
He acted, also, not merely as a companion but 
as a guide and interpreter. He assisted me also 
in getting hold of the documents and literature 
in the different countries we visited which 
enabled me to correct the impressions I had 
formed on the spot and to supplement them with 
the facts and statistics in regard to the con- 
ditions we had observed. 

In several directions Doctor Park was pe- 
culiarly fitted for giving me this sort of assist- 
ance. In the first place, during the years he 
had been at Tuskegee he had become thoroughly 
acquainted with conditions in the Southern 
States and, in the course of the journey of ob- 
servation and study on which he had accompa- 
nied me, we had become thoroughly acquainted 
with each other, so that he understood not only 



16 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

what I desired, but what it was important for 
me to see in Europe. 

In the second place, shortly before I met him, 
Doctor Park had just returned from four years 
of study in Europe. He was familiar with 
much of the ground we intended to cover and 
at the same time spoke the language which was 
of greatest use in most of the countries we 
visited — namely, German. 

Two people travelling together can, under 
any circumstances, see and learn a great deal 
more than one. When it comes to travelling 
in a new and unfamiliar country this is em- 
phatically true. For this reason a large part 
of what I saw and learned about Europe is due 
directly to the assistance of Doctor Park. 
Our method of procedure was about as follows: 
When we reached a city or other part of the 
country which we wished to study we would 
usually start out together. I had a notebook 
in which I jotted down on the spot what I saw 
that interested me, and Doctor Park, who had 
had experience as a newspaper reporter, used 
his eyes and ears. Then in the course of our long 
stretches of railway travel we compared notes and 
comments and sifted, as thoroughly as we were 
able, the facts and observations we had been able 
to gather. Then as soon as we reached a large 
city I got hold of a stenographer and dictated, 



HUNTING THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 17 

as fully as I was able, the story of what we had 
seen and learned. In doing this I used Doctor 
Park's observations, I suppose, quite as much as 
I did my own. In fact, I do not believe I am 
able to say now how much of what I have 
written is based upon my own personal obser- 
vations and what is based upon those of Doc- 
tor Park. Thus, it should be remembered that 
although this book is written throughout in the 
first person it contains the observations of two 
different individuals. 

In another direction Doctor Park has con- 
tributed to make this book what it is. While I 
was dictating my own account of our adventures 
he would usually spend the time hunting through 
the book stores and libraries for any books or 
information which would throw any light on 
the matter in which we were interested. The 
result was that we returned with nearly a trunk- 
ful of books, papers, and letters which we had 
obtained in different places and from different 
people we met. With these documents Doctor 
Park then set to work to straighten out and 
complete the matter that I had dictated, filling 
in and adding to what I had written. The 
chapters which follow are the result. 

I set out from America, as I have said, to 
find the man farthest down. In a period of 
about six weeks I visited parts of England, 



18 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

Scotland, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Italy, 
Sicily, Poland, and Denmark. I spent some 
time among the poorer classes of London and in 
several cities in Austria and Italy. I investi- 
gated, to a certain extent, the condition of the 
agricultural populations in Sicily, in Bohemia, 
Poland, and Denmark. I saw much that was 
sad and depressing, but I saw much, also, that 
was hopeful and inspiring. Bad as conditions 
are in some places, I do not think I visited any 
place where things are not better now than they 
were some years ago. 

I found also that the connection between 
Europe and America is much closer and more 
intimate than I had imagined. I am sure that 
very few persons in this country realize the 
extent to which America has touched and 
influenced the masses of the people in Europe. 
I think it is safe to say that no single influence 
which is to-day tending to change and raise 
the condition of the working people in the 
agricultural regions of southern Europe is 
greater than the constant stream of emigration 
which is pouring out of Europe into America 
and back again into Europe. It should be 
remembered that not only do large numbers of 
these people emigrate to America, but many 
of these emigrants return and bring with them 
not only money to buy lands, but new ideas, 



HUNTING THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 19 

higher ambitions, and a wider outlook on the 
world. 

Everywhere that I went, even in the most 
distant parts of the country, where as yet the 
people have been almost untouched by the 
influences of modern civilization, I met men who 
spoke in broken English, but with genuine 
enthusiasm, of America. Once, when I had 
made a half-day's journey by rail and wagon 
into a distant village in Poland, in order to 
see something of life in a primitive farming 
village, I was enthusiastically welcomed at the 
country tavern by the proprietor and two or 
three other persons, all of whom had lived for 
some time in America and were able to speak 
a little English. 

At another time, when I visited the sulphur 
mines in the mountains of central Sicily, I was 
surprised and delighted to encounter, deep 
down in one of these mines, several hundred 
feet below the surface, a man with whom I 
was able to speak familiarly about the coal 
mines of West Virginia, where each of us, 
at different times, had been employed in mine 
labour. 

There seemed to be no part of Europe so 
distant or so remote that the legend of America 
had not penetrated to it; and the influence of 
America, of American ideas, is certainly making 



20 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

itself felt in a very definite way in the lowest 
strata of European civilization. 

The thing that impressed me most, however, 
was the condition of the labouring women of 
Europe. I do not know the statistics, but if I 
am permitted to judge by what I saw I should 
say that three fourths of the work on the farms, 
and a considerable part of the heavy work in 
the cities of Europe, is performed by women. 
Not only that, but in the low life of great cities, 
like London, it seems to me that the women 
suffer more from the evil influences of slum life 
than the men. In short, if I may put it that 
way, the man farthest down in Europe is woman. 
Women have the narrowest outlook, do the 
hardest work, stand in greatest need of edu- 
cation, and are farthest removed from influences 
which are everywhere raising the level of life 
among the masses of the European people. 



CHAPTER II 

THE MAN AT THE BOTTOM IN LONDON 

THE Carmania, the ship in which I had 
sailed, disembarked its passengers late 
Saturday at Fishguard, off the coast 
of Wales. The special train which sped us on 
to London reached the city early Sunday morn- 
ing, August 28. 

As I drove from the railway station in the 
gray of the early morning my attention was 
attracted by a strange, shapeless and disrepu- 
table figure which slunk out of the shadow of a 
building and moved slowly and dejectedly down 
the silent and empty street. In that quarter of 
the city, and in comparison with the solid re- 
spectability and comfort represented by the 
houses around him, the figure of this man seemed 
grotesquely wretched. In fact, he struck me 
as the most lonely object I had ever laid my 
eyes on. I watched him down the street as 
far as I could see. He turned neither to the left 
nor to the right, but moved slowly on, his head 
bent toward the ground, apparently looking for 
something he did not hope to find. In the 



22 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

course of my journey across Europe I saw much 
poverty, but I do not think I saw anything quite 
so hopeless and wretched. 

I had not been long in London before I 
learned that this man was a type. It is said 
that there are ten thousand of these homeless 
and houseless men and women in East London 
alone. They are, however, not confined to any 
part of the city. They may be found in the fash- 
ionable West End, lounging on the benches of 
St. James's Park, as well as in the East End, 
where the masses of the labouring people live. 
The Salvation Army has erected shelters for 
them in many of the poorer parts of the city, 
where, for anything from two to eight cents, 
they may get a room for the night, and some- 
times a piece of bread and a bowl of soup. 
Thousands of them are not able to compass the 
small sum necessary to obtain even this mini- 
mum of food and comfort. These are the out- 
casts and the rejected, the human waste of a 
great city. They represent the man at the bot- 
tom in London. 

Later, in the course of my wanderings about 
the city, I met many of these hopeless and 
broken men. I saw them sitting, on sunshiny 
days, not only men but women also, crumpled up 
on benches or stretched out on the grass of the 
parks. I discovered them on rainy nights 



THE MAN AT THE BOTTOM 23 

crouching in doorways or huddled away in 
dark corners where an arch or a wall protected 
them from the cold. I met them in the early 
morning hours, before the city was awake, 
creeping along the Strand and digging with 
their hands in the garbage-boxes; and again, 
late at night, on the Thames Embankment, 
where hundreds of them sleep — when the 
night watchman permits — on the benches or 
stretched out on the stone pavements. After 
a time I learned to distinguish the same type 
under the disguise of those street venders who 
stand on street corners and sell collar-buttons, 
matches, and other trifles, stretching out their 
hands in a pitiful sort of supplication to passers- 
by to buy their wares. 

Whenever I found an opportunity to do so, I 
talked with some of these outcasts. Gradually, 
partly from themselves and partly from others, 
I learned something of their histories. I found 
that it was usually drink that had been the 
immediate cause of their downfall. But there 
were always other and deeper causes. Most of 
them, it seemed to me, had simply been borne 
down by the temptations and the fierce compe- 
tition of life in a great city. There comes a 
time when trade is dull; men who had been 
accustomed to spend much money begin to 
spend less, and there is no work to be had. At 



24 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

these times it is "the less efficient, the less 
energetic, the less strong, the less young, the 
less regular, the less temperate, or the less 
docile" who are crowded out. In this way 
these men have lost their hold and sunk to the 
bottom. 

I remember meeting one of these men late 
at night wandering along the Thames Embank- 
ment. In the course of my conversation with 
him I asked him, among other things, if he 
voted, and, if so, to what political party he 
belonged. 

He looked at me in amazement, and then he 
said he had never voted in his life. It was his 
expression rather than his words that impressed 
me. This expression told me how out of touch 
he was with the world about him. He had, in 
fact, as I learned, no family, no home, friends, 
trade; he belonged to no society; he had, so 
far as I could learn, no views on life. In the 
very midst of this great city he was as solitary 
as a hermit. 

A few weeks later, in a little village in Galicia, 
I asked the same question of a Polish peasant. 
"Oh, yes," he eagerly replied; "every one votes 



here now. 



>3 



Sixty years ago most of the peasants in this 
village to which I have referred were serfs, and 
it was not until two years ago that the Govern- 



THE MAN AT THE BOTTOM 25 

mentgave them all the right to vote. Never- 
theless, at the present time the people in this 
village are represented by one of their own num- 
ber in the Imperial Parliament at Vienna. I 
stopped on my way through the village at the 
little store kept by this man. I found two 
young girls tending the store, his daughters, but 
the representative himself was not at home. 

I do not know why I should mention this 
circumstance here, except that I was impressed 
by the contrast in the reply of these two men, 
the one coming from a peasant in Poland and 
the other from an Englishman in London. 

It is generally said that the Negro represents 
in America the man farthest down. In going 
to Europe I had in mind to compare the masses 
of the Negro people of the Southern States with 
the masses in Europe in something like the same 
stage of civilization. It would not be difficult 
to compare the Negro in the South with the 
Polish peasant, for example, because the masses 
of the Poles are, like the masses of the Negroes, 
an agricultural people. 

I know no class among the Negroes in America, 
however, with whom I could compare the man 
at the bottom in England. Whatever one may 
say of the Negro in America, he is not, as a rule, 
a beggar. It is very rarely that any one sees 
a black hand stretched out for alms. One 



26 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

does see, to be sure, too many idle and loaf- 
ing Negroes standing on the street corners and 
around the railway stations in the South, but 
the Negro is not, as a rule, a degenerate. If 
he is at the bottom in America, it is not because 
he has gone backward and sunk down, but be- 
cause he has never risen. 

Another thing in regard to the Negro: al- 
though he is frequently poor, he is never with- 
out hope and a certain joy in living. No 
hardship he has yet encountered, either in 
slavery or in freedom, has robbed the Negro of 
the desire to live. The race constantly grew 
and increased in slavery, and it has considerably 
more than doubled in freedom. There are 
some people among the members of my race who 
complain about the hardships which the Negro 
suffers, but none of them yet, so far as I know, 
has ever recommended "race suicide" as a solu- 
tion of the race problem. 

I mention this because I found just the con- 
trary to be the case in England. I do not 
think that anything I saw or heard while I 
was in England gave me a more poignant im- 
pression of the hardships of the labouring man 
in England than the discovery that one of the 
most widely read weekly papers in England, 
under the caption of "The White Slaves of 
Morality," was making a public campaign in 



THE MAN AT THE BOTTOM 27 

favour of reducing the size of the families 
among the working classes. 

The articles I refer to, which were written 
by a woman, were a protest, on the one hand, 
against the clergy because they taught that it 
would be immoral for women to refuse to have 
children, and, on the other hand, against the 
physicians who withheld from these women the 
knowledge by which they might be able to 
limit the size of their families. These articles 
were followed from week to week by letters 
purporting to come from working men and 
women telling of the heartbreaking struggle 
they were making to support their children on 
the wages they were able to earn. 

What made these articles the more startling 
was the fact that, at the very time when they 
were proposing to the English labourer what ex- 
President Roosevelt has defined as "race sui- 
cide," thousands of immigrants from the south 
of Europe were pouring into London every year 
to take the places left vacant by the recession 
of the native Anglo-Saxon. 

On my previous visit to England I had been 
struck by what seemed to me the cold and for- 
mal character of the English newspapers. It 
seemed to me that they were wholly lacking in 
human interest. Upon my last visit my opinion 
in regard to the London newspapers was con- 



28 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

siderably altered. A careful study of the daily 
newspaper, I found, will repay any one who 
wants to get an insight into social conditions 
in England. 

I had not been in London more than a day 
or two, for example, when my attention was 
attracted to the following item in one of the 
morning papers : 

STARVING FAMILY 
coroner's appeal to the public for aid 

Telling of a terrible case of starvation in the Stoke Newington 
Coroner's Court, Dr. Wynn Westcott, the coroner, asked the 
press to bring a deserving case before the notice of the char- 
itable public. 

He said that he had held an inquest upon a three-weeks-old 
baby which had died of starvation. Its father had had no 
regular work for three years, and only a little casual work in 
that time. There was so little money that the mother, Mrs. 
Attewell, of White Hart Street, Stoke Newington, was half 
starved too. She had only had a crust of bread to sustain her 
on the day her child died, although she had done nine and a 
half hours' washing to assist the home. 

The home was perfectly clean, although practically destitute 
of furniture. It was a most deserving case. 

After reading this item I began studying the 
papers more closely, and I was surprised at the 
frequency with which items of this kind oc- 
curred. I learned that the Local Government 
Board, which is represented in the English 
Cabinet by Mr. John Burns, has issued since 
1 87 1 an annual report, or return, as it is called, 



THE MAN AT THE BOTTOM 29 

of the cases in which, upon formal investigation 
by a coroner's jury, it appears that the persons 
came to their death in London as a result 
of starvation. I obtained a copy of the return 
for 1908, in which are included the statistics on 
starvation not merely for London but for the 
rest of England and Wales. 

The forms issued to coroners were explicit. 
They provided that the return should include 
only cases in which the jury found that death was 
brought about by starvation or privation due 
to destitution. Cases in which death was 
caused by cold, starvation, exposure, etc., un- 
connected with destitution, were not entered in 
this return. Of the one hundred and twenty- 
five cases of starvation reported, fifty-two oc- 
curred in London. In eleven cases death was 
described as due to starvation in conjunction 
with some other cause — that is to say, disease, 
drink, exposure, or self-neglect. In eighty of the 
one hundred and twenty-five cases no application 
was made for poor relief, or application was made 
only when the deceased had been in a dying con- 
dition. 

A few days after I had succeeded in getting 
this report my attention was attracted one 
morning by the heading of a newspaper article: 
"How the Poor Die." The article was an ac- 
count of the finding of the body of an unknown 



30 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

woman in a cellar in the basement of a house 
not very far from where I was stopping. 

"It appears," the article said, "that during 
the earlier part of the morning a tenant of the 
building observed a woman sleeping in the cel- 
lar, but no particular notice was taken of this 
because of the fact that strangers frequently 
utilized the cellar for such purposes. Mr. Oli- 
ver, one of the occupants of the building, had 
occasion to go downstairs, and saw the woman. 
She was crouched in a corner and her head was 
lying back. The police were called in and the 
services of Doctor Barton were requisitioned. 
. . . Although the cause of death will 
not be known until a post-mortem exami- 
nation of the body has been made, death, it is 
thought, was due to starvation. The woman 
was about six feet in height, between forty and 
fifty years of age, and was in a very emaciated 
condition and clad in very scanty attire. " 

Not infrequently, when in my public speeches 
I have made some reference to the condition of 
the Negro in the South, certain members of 
my own race in the North have objected be- 
cause, they said, I did not paint conditions 
in the South black enough. During my stay 
in England I had the unusual experience of 
being criticised in the London newspapers for 
the same reason, this time by an American 



THE MAN AT THE BOTTOM 31 

white man. At the very moment that this man 
attacked me because in my public interviews I 
emphasized the opportunities rather than the 
wrongs of the Negro in the South I had in my 
possession the document to which I have re- 
ferred, which gives the official history of fifty- 
two persons, one for every week in the year, 
who had died in the city of London alone for 
want of food. 

I have never denied that the Negro in the 
South frequently meets with wrong and in- 
justice; but he does not starve. I do not think 
a single case was ever heard of, in the South, 
where a Negro died from want of food. In 
fact, unless because of sickness or some other 
reason he has been unable to work, it is compar- 
atively rare to find a Negro in an almshouse. 

It has not been my purpose in anything I 
have written to pass judgment upon the people 
or the conditions that I have found in the 
countries which I have visited. Criticism is an 
ungrateful task at best, and one for which I am 
not well fitted. Neither shall I attempt to 
offer any suggestions as to how conditions may 
be improved; in fact, I am convinced from what 
I learned that the people on the ground under- 
stand conditions much better than I possibly 
could, and in a later chapter I hope to tell some- 
thing of the great work that has been done in 



32 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

England and elsewhere to raise the level of life 
and comfort among the people who are at the 
bottom in the countries which I visited. What 
I am anxious to do here is to emphasize some of 
the advantages which it seems the members of 
my own race, and particularly those living in the 
Southern States, have at the present time. It 
is not difficult to discover the disadvantages 
under which the Negroes in the South labour. 
Every traveller who passes through the South 
sees the conditions existing, and frequently 
returns to write books about them. There is 
danger, however, that the opportunities to which 
I have referred will be overlooked or not fully 
appreciated by the members of my race until 
it is too late. 

One direction in which the Negro in the South 
has an advantage is in the matter of labour. 
One of the most pitiful things 1 saw in Lon- 
don, Liverpool, and other English cities was the 
groups of idle men standing about on the street 
corners, especially around the bar-rooms, be- 
cause they were not able to get work. 

One day, as I was going along one of the main 
avenues of the city, I noticed an unusually large 
crowd standing in front of a street organ which 
was drawn up at the side of the pavement. 
Pausing to see what there was about this organ 
that attracted so much attention and interest, 



THE MAN AT THE BOTTOM 33 

I found that the man who owned this instru- 
ment was using it as a method of advertising his 
poverty. 

All over the front of the organ were plastered 
papers and documents of various kinds. On one 
side there was a list of advertisements cut from 
the "Want" columns of the* daily newspapers. 
Attached to this was a statement that these 
were some of the places that the man had 
visited the day before in search of work, which 
he was not able to find. On the other side of 
the organ were attached six or seven pawn 
tickets, with the statement that "these are some 
of the articles which my dear wife pawned to 
get food for our children." This was followed 
by a pitiful appeal for help. The pathetic 
thing about it was that the only persons who 
stopped to look at these exhibits besides my- 
self were a group of hungry and disreputable- 
looking men who were evidently in just as great 
want as the man who ground the organ. I 
watched those men. After reading the signs 
they would look inquiringly at the other mem- 
bers of the group and then relapse into the same 
stolid silence which I had noticed so many 
times in the forlorn figures that filled the benches 
of the parks. 

It seemed to me that they both pitied and 
admired the man who had conceived this novel 



34 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

way of advertising his misfortune. I have 
noticed these same people in other cases where 
it seemed to me they looked with something 
like envy upon a beggar who was blind or lame 
or had some other interesting misfortune 
which enabled him to win the sympathy of the 
public. 

Of course the persons that I have attempted 
to describe do not represent the labouring classes. 
They represent the man at the bottom, who lives 
by begging or casual labour. It shows, neverthe- 
less, how bitter is the struggle for existence among 
the labouring class higher up, that the class be- 
low, the class which lives in actual poverty, is so 
large and so much in evidence. 

While I was in London I received letters from 
a great many persons of all classes and con- 
ditions. One of these was from a coloured man 
who was born and raised in the South and was 
anxious to get back home. I am tempted to 
quote some passages of his letter here, because 
they show how conditions impressed a coloured 
man from the South who got closer to them than 
I was able to. He had been living, he said, 
in London for fourteen months without work. 

"I have tried to apply for work," he con- 
tinued. "They said they want Englishmen. 
It seems to me that all Britain are against the 
Negro race. Some say, 'Go back to your own 



THE MAN AT THE BOTTOM 35 

country,' knowing if I had the means I would 
fly to-morrow. " 

Perhaps I would do better to quote some 
passages from his letter verbatim. He says: 

I cannot get a passage; to be alone in London without any 
help or funds, like a pin in a haystack, nothing but sorrow and 
distress. Hearing Mr. B. T. Washington were in London I 
appeal to him in the name of God Almighty if he can possibly 
help me with a ticket to get across, because the lady that was 
kind enough to give me a shelter is without fund herself; being a 
Christian woman she gave me food for what she can afford. 
At night I have to sleep in a house with a widow which has two 
children which has to make her living by chopping wood, 
whom some day, does not earn enough to buy a loaf of bread for 
her children. The winter is coming on and I like to get home 
to shuck corn or to get to Maryland for a oyster draggin. It is 
a long time since I had watermelon, pig's feet and corn. Say, 
Mr. Washington, if you ever knew what a man in a hole is I 
guess I am in a hole and the cover over. I can see the pork 
chops and the corn bread and the hot biscuits calling me to come 
over and get some and many a time I have tried but failed. I 
can't reach them; the great Atlantic Ocean stop me and I remain 

Your Obedient Servant, 

This letter from which I have given a few 
extracts is but one of many which I received dur- 
ing my stay in London, not only from coloured 
but from white Americans who had come to 
England to better their condition or seek their 
fortune. 

These letters served still further to impress 
me with the fact that the masses of my own 
people in the South do not fully appreciate the 



36 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

advantages which they have in living in a 
country where there is a constant demand for 
labour of all kinds and where even poor people 
do not starve. 

If I were asked what I believed would be the 
greatest boon that could be conferred upon the 
English labourer, I should say that it would be 
for him to have the same opportunities for 
constant and steady work that the Negro now 
has in the South. If I were asked what would 
be the next greatest benefit that could be con- 
ferred upon the English labourer, I should say 
that it would be to have schools in which every 
class could learn to do some one thing well — 
to have, in other words, the benefit of the kind 
of industrial education that we are seeking, in 
some measure, to give to the Negro at the 
present time in the Southern States. 



CHAPTER III 

FROM PETTICOAT LANE TO SKIBO CASTLE 

THE first thing about London that im- 
pressed me was its size; the second was 
the wide division between the different 
elements in the population. 

London is not only the largest city in the 
world; it is also the city in which the segrega- 
tion of the classes has gone farthest. The West 
End, for example, is the home of the King and 
the Court. Here are the Houses of Parliament, 
Westminster Abbey, the British Museum, most 
of the historical monuments, the art galleries, 
and nearly everything that is interesting, re- 
fined, and beautiful in the lives of seven millions 
of people who make up the inhabitants of the 
city. 

If you take a cab at Trafalgar Square, how- 
ever, and ride eastward down the Strand through 
Fleet Street, where all the principal newspapers 
of London are published, past the Bank of 
England, St. Paul's Cathedral, and the interest- 
ing sights and scenes of the older part of the 
city, you come, all of a sudden, into a very 

37 



38 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

different region, the centre of which is the 
famous Whitechapel. 

The difference between the East End and the 
West End of London is that East London has 
no monuments, no banks, no hotels, theatres, 
art galleries; no history — nothing that is interest- 
ing and attractive but its poverty and its 
problems. Everything else is drab and com- 
monplace. 

It is, however, a mistake, as I soon learned, 
to assume that East London is a slum. It is, 
in fact, a city by itself, and a very remarkable 
city, for it has, including what you may call its 
suburbs, East Ham and West Ham, a population 
of something over two millions, made up for 
the most part of hard-working, thrifty labouring 
people. It has its dark places, also, but I 
visited several parts of London during my stay 
in the city which were considerably worse in 
every respect than anything I saw in the East 
End. 

Nevertheless, it is said that more than one 
hundred thousand of the people in this part of 
the city, in spite of all the efforts that have 
been made to help them, are living on the verge 
of starvation. So poor and so helpless are 
these people that it was, at one time, seriously 
proposed to separate them from the rest of the 
population and set them off in a city by them- 



TO SKIBO CASTLE 39 

selves, where they could live and work entirely 
under the direction of the state. It was pro- 
posed to put this hundred thousand of the very 
poor under the direction and care of the state 
because they were not able to take care of them- 
selves, and because it was declared that all the 
service which they rendered the community 
could be performed by the remaining portion 
of the population in their leisure moments, so 
that they were, in fact, not a help but a hin- 
drance to the life of the city as a whole. 

I got my first view of one of the characteristic 
sights of the East End life at Middlesex Street, 
or Petticoat Lane, as it was formerly called. 
Petticoat Lane is in the centre of the. Jewish 
quarter, and on Sunday morning there is a 
famous market in this street. On both sides 
of the thoroughfare, running northward from 
Whitechapel Road until they lose themselves 
in some of the side streets, one sees a double line 
of pushcarts, upon which every imaginable sort 
of ware, from wedding rings to eels in jelly, 
is exposed for sale. On both sides of these 
carts and in the middle of the street a motley 
throng of bargain-hunters are pushing their way 
through the crowds, stopping to look over the 
curious wares in the carts or to listen to the 
shrill cries of some hawker selling painkiller or 
some other sort of magic cure-all. 



40 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

Nearly all of the merchants are Jews, but 
the majority of their customers belong to the 
tribes of the Gentiles. Among others I noticed 
a class of professional customers. They were 
evidently artisans of some sort or other who had 
come to pick out from the goods exposed for 
sale a plane or a saw or some other sort of second- 
hand tool; there were others searching for use- 
ful bits of old iron, bolts, brass, springs, keys, 
and other things of that sort which they would 
be able to turn to some use in their trades. 

I spent an hour or more wandering through 
this street and the neighbouring lane into 
which this petty pushcart traffic had over- 
flowed. Second-hand clothing, second-hand 
household articles, the waste meats of the Sat- 
urday market, all kinds of wornout and cast-off 
articles which had been fished out of the junk 
heaps of the city or thrust out of the regular 
channels of trade, find here a ready market. 

I think that the thing which impressed me 
most was not the poverty, which was evident 
enough, but the sombre tone of the crowd 
and the whole proceeding. It was not a happy 
crowd; there were no bright colours, and very 
little laughter. It was an ill-dressed crowd, 
made up of people who had long been accus- 
tomed to live, as it were, at second-hand and 
in close relations with the pawnbroker. 



TO SKIBO CASTLE 41 

In the Southern States it would be hard to find 
a coloured man who did not make some change 
in his appearance on Sunday. The Negro 
labourer is never so poor that he forgets to 
put on a clean collar or a bright necktie or 
something out of the ordinary out of respect 
for the Sabbath. In the midst of this busy, 
pushing throng it was hard for me to remember 
that I was in England and that it was Sunday. 
Somehow or other I had got a very different 
notion of the English Sabbath. 

Petticoat Lane is in the midst of the "sweat- 
ing" district, where most of the cheap clothing 
in London is made. Through windows and 
open doors I could see the pale faces of the 
garment-makers bent over their work. There 
is much furniture made in this region, also, I 
understand. Looking down into some of the 
cellars as I passed, I saw men working at the 
lathes. Down at the end of the street was a 
bar-room, which was doing a rushing business. 
The law in London is, as I understand, that 
travellers may be served at a public bar on 
Sunday, but not others. To be a traveller, a 
bona-fide traveller, you must have come from 
a distance of at least three miles. There were 
a great many travellers in Petticoat Lane on 
the Sunday morning that I was there. 

This same morning I visited Bethnal Green, 



42 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

another and a quite different quarter of the 
East End. There are a number of these differ- 
ent quarters of the East End, like Stepney, 
Poplar, St. George's in the East, and so forth. 
Each of these has its peculiar type of popula- 
tion and its own peculiar conditions. White- 
chapel is Jewish; St. George's in the East is 
Jewish at one end and Irish at the other, but 
Bethnal Green is English. For nearly half a 
mile along Bethnal Green Road I found another 
Sunday market in full swing, and it was, if 
anything, louder and more picturesque than 
the one in Petticoat Lane 

It was about eleven o'clock in the morning; 
the housewives of Bethnal Green were out on 
the street hunting bargains in meat and vege- 
tables for .the Sunday dinner. One of the most 
interesting groups I passed was crowded about 
a pushcart where three sturdy old women, 
shouting at the top of their lungs, were reeling 
off bolt after bolt of cheap cotton cloth to a 
crowd of women gathered about their cart. 

At another point a man was " knocking down " 
at auction cheap cuts of frozen beef from 
Australia at prices ranging from 4 to 8 cents a 
pound. Another was selling fish, another crock- 
ery, and a third tinware, and so through the 
whole list of household staples. 

The market on Bethnal Green Road extends 



TO SKIBO CASTLE 43 

across a street called Brick Lane and branches 
off again from that into other and narrower 
streets. In one of these there is a market 
exclusively for birds, and another for various 
sorts of fancy articles not of the first neces- 
sity. The interesting thing about all this 
traffic was that, although no one seemed to 
exercise any sort of control over it, somehow 
the different classes of trade had managed to 
organize themselves so that all the wares of 
one particular sort were displayed in one place 
and all the wares of another sort in another, 
everything in regular and systematic order. 
The streets were so busy and crowded that I 
wondered if there were any people left in that 
part of the town to attend the churches. 

One of the marvels of London is the number 
of handsome and stately churches. One meets 
these beautiful edifices everywhere, not merely 
in the West End, where there is wealth suf- 
ficient to build and support them, but in 
the crowded streets of the business part of the 
city, where there are no longer any people to 
attend them. Even in the grimiest precincts 
of the East End, where all is dirt and squalor, 
one is likely to come unexpectedly upon one of 
these beautiful old churches, with its quiet 
churchyard and little space of green, recalling 



44 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

the time when the region, which is now crowded 
with endless rows of squalid city dwellings, was, 
perhaps, dotted with pleasant country villages. 
These churches are beautiful, but as far as I 
could see they were, for the most part, silent 
and empty. The masses of the people enjoy the 
green spaces outside, but do not as a rule, I 
fear, attend the services on the inside. They 
are too busy. 

It is not because the churches are not making 
an effort to reach the people that the masses do 
not go to them. One has only to read the 
notices posted outside of any of the church 
buildings in regard to night schools, lectures, 
men's clubs and women's clubs, and many other / 
organizations of various sorts, to know that 
there is much earnestness and effort on the 
part of the churches to reach down and help 
the people. The trouble seems to be that the 
people are not at the same time reaching up to 
the church. It is one of the results of the dis- 
tance between the classes that rule and the 
classes that work. It is too far from White- 
chapel to St. James's Park. What Mr. Kipling 
says, in another connection, seems to be true of 
London: 



"The East is East, and the West is West, 
And never these twain shall meet. " 



TO SKIBO CASTLE 45 

While on one side of Bethnal Green Road the 
hucksters were shouting and the crowd was busy 
dickering and chaffering for food and clothes, 
I noticed on the other side of the street a way- 
side preacher. I went over and listened to 
what he had to say, and then I noted the effect 
of his words upon his hearers. He had gathered 
about him perhaps a dozen persons, most of 
them, however, seeming to be his own adherents 
who had come out to the meeting merely to 
give him the benefit of their moral support. 
The great mass of the people who passed up and 
down the street did not pay the slightest at- 
tention to him. There was no doubt about 
the earnestness and sincerity of the man, but 
as I listened to what he had to say I could find 
in his words nothing that seemed to me to touch 
in any direct or definite way the lives of the 
people about him. In fact, I. doubted whether 
the majority of them could really understand 
what he was talking about. 

Somewhat later, in another part of the city, 
I had an opportunity to listen to another of 
these street preachers. In this case he was a 
young man, apparently fresh from college, and 
he was making a very genuine effort, as it 
seemed to me, to reach and influence in a prac- 
tical way the people whom the lights of the 
torches and the music had attracted to the 



46 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

meeting. I observed that the people listened 
respectfully to what he had to say, and I have 
no doubt they were impressed, as I was, with 
his evident desire to help them. It was only 
too evident, however, that he was speaking 
another language than theirs; that, in fact, one 
might almost say he belonged to a different 
race of people. The gulf between them was 
too great. 

After listening to this man I thought I could 
understand in a way that I had not understood 
before the great success which the Salvation 
Army at one time had among the masses of the 
people of East London. In its early days, at 
least, the Salvation Army was of the people; 
it picked its preachers from the streets; it 
appealed to the masses it was seeking to help 
for its support; in fact, it set the slums to work 
to save itself. The Salvation Army is not so 
popular in East London, I understand, as it 
used to be. One trouble with the Salvation 
Army, as with much of the effort that has been 
made to help the people of East London, is 
that the Salvation Army seeks to reach only 
those who are already down; it does not at- 
tempt to deal with the larger and deeper prob- 
lem of saving those who have not yet fallen. 

The problem of the man farthest down, 
whether he lives in America or in Europe, and 



TO SKIBO CASTLE 47 

whether he be black or white, is, in my opinion, 
not one of conversion merely, but of education 
as well. It is necessary, in other words, to 
inspire the masses in the lower strata of life 
with a disposition to live a sober, honest, and 
useful life, but it is necessary also to give them 
an opportunity and a preparation to live such a 
life after they have gained the disposition to 
do so. 

The Negro in America, whatever his draw- 
backs in other directions, is not indifferent to 
religious influences. The Negro is not only 
naturally religious, but the religion he enjoys 
in America is his own in a sense that is not true, 
it seems to me, of much of the religious life and 
work among the people of East London. 

The most powerful and influential organi- 
zation among the Negroes in America to-day 
is the Negro church, and the Negroes sup- 
port their own churches. They not only sup- 
port the churches and the ministers, but they 
support also a large number of schools and 
colleges in which their children, and especially 
those who desire to be ministers, may get their 
education. These little theological seminaries 
are frequently poorly equipped and lacking 
in almost everything but good intentions; they 
are generally, however, as good as the people 
are able to make them. The Negro ministers 



48 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

in the backwoods districts of the South are 
frequently rude and ignorant and sometimes 
immoral, but they have this advantage, that 
they spring from and represent the people, 
and the religion which they preach is a religion 
which has grown up in response to the actual 
needs and feelings of the masses of the Negro 
people. In other words, the religion of the 
Negro in America is on a sound basis, because 
the Negro church has never got out of touch 
with the masses of the Negro people. 

After leaving East London on my first Sunday 
in England, I drove about fifteen miles through 
the famous Epping Forest to Waltham Abbey, 
the country seat of Sir T. Fowell Buxton, a 
grandson of Sir T. Fowell Buxton, who succeeded 
Wilberforce as leader of the anti-slavery party 
in parliament, and who framed the bill that 
finally resulted in the emancipation of the 
slaves in the English West Indies. 

There is certainly no more beautiful country to 
look upon than rural England. Flowering vines 
cover the humble cottage of the farm labourer 
as well as the luxurious country seats of the 
landowners, and lend a charm to everything the 
eye rests upon. I was all the more impressed with 
the blooming freshness of the country because I had 
come out of the stifling life of the crowded city. 
I learned, however, that rural England has for 



TO SKIBO CASTLE 49 

a long time past been steadily losing its popula- 
tion. From 1 89 1 to 1900 it is said that the num- 
ber of farm labourers in England decreased 20 per 
cent., and it has been estimated that the rural 
population of England and Wales has diminished 
something like 30 or 40 per cent, during the 
past century, at a time when the urban popu- 
lation has multiplied itself many times over. 

There are, of course, many reasons for this 
decrease in the agricultural population. One is, 
that at the present time not more than 15 
per cent, of the land in England is farmed 
by the people who own it. Thirty-eight thou- 
sand landowners hold four fifths of all the 
agricultural land in England. 

A few days after my visit to Sir Fowell Bux- 
ton at Waltham Abbey I went into northern 
Scotland to visit Mr. Andrew Carnegie at Skibo 
Castle. While I was there I had opportunity to 
get some sort of acquaintance with farming con- 
ditions in that part of the world. 

In Scotland the opportunities for the small 
farmer to obtain land are even less than they 
are in England. Some years ago, it is said, 
twenty-four persons in Scotland owned estates 
of more than 100,000 acres. The Duke of 
Sutherland owns a tract stretching, I was told, 
clear across Scotland from coast to coast. 

In no country in the world is so small a portion 



50 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

of the population engaged in agriculture as is true 
in England. For instance, 68 per cent, of the 
population of Hungary, 59 per cent, of the 
population of Italy, 48 per cent, of the popu- 
lation of Denmark, 37.5 per cent, of the popu- 
lation of the United States are engaged in 
agriculture. In England and in Wales in 1901 
only 8 per cent, were engaged in agriculture. 

Not only is it true that a larger proportion 
of the population of England than of other 
countries has removed from the country to 
the city, but in England, also, the distance 
between the man in the city and the man on the 
soil is greater than elsewhere. For example, 
in Italy the distinction between the agricultural 
labourer and the labourer in the city may be 
said hardly to exist; the man who, at one part 
of the year, finds work in the city, is very likely 
to be found at work at some other time of the 
year in the country. 

In Germany also I noticed that a great many 
of the manufacturing plants were located in 
the country, where the factory labourer had an 
opportunity to cultivate a small patch of land. 
To the extent that he has been able to raise his 
own food, the factory hand in Germany.has made 
himself independent of the manufacturers and 
the market. 

In Hungary I was told that in harvest time 



TO SKIBO CASTLE 51 

the public works were deserted and many of 
the factories were compelled to shut down, 
because every one went away to the country 
to work in the fields. 

Now, the thing that interested me in ob- 
serving the vast dislocation of the rural popu- 
lation of England, represented by this vast 
labouring community of East London, was the 
extent to which the English labourer, in mov- 
ing from the country to the city, had lost his 
natural independence. 

In losing his hold upon the soil the English 
labourer has made himself peculiarly dependent 
upon the organization of the society about 
him. He can, for instance, neither build his 
own home nor raise his own food. In the 
city he must pay a much larger rent than it 
would be necessary for him to pay in the coun- 
try. He must work more steadily in order to 
live, and he has to depend upon some one else 
to give him the opportunity to work. In this 
respect, although the English labourer is prob- 
ably better paid and better fed than any other 
labourer in Europe, he is less protected from 
the effects of competition. He is more likely 
to suffer from the lack of opportunity to work. 

In the same way England as a whole is more 
dependent upon foreign countries for the sale 
of its manufactured products and the purchase 



$2 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

of its food supply than is any other country in 
Europe. Thus it will be found that most of 
the great questions which are now agitating 
England, like most of the great questions which 
are agitating other countries in Europe, are 
more or less directly concerned with the matter 
of agriculture and the condition of the labourer 
on the land. 

I said in the preceding chapter that one advan- 
tage that the Negro in the South had was the op- 
portunity to work for the asking. The Negro 
in the South has opportunities in another di- 
rection that no other man in his position has, 
outside of America: he has the opportunity to 
get land. No one who has not visited Europe 
can understand what the opportunity to get 
land means to a race that has so recently gained 
its freedom. 

No one who has not seen something of the 
hardships of the average workingman in a great 
city like London can understand the privilege 
that we in the Southern States have in living in 
the country districts, where there is indepen- 
dence and a living for every man, and where 
we have the opportunity to fix ourselves for- 
ever on the soil. 



CHAPTER IV 

/V FIRST IMPRESSION OF LIFE AND LABOUR ON 
THE CONTINENT 

ONE clear, cold morning, about the first 
of September, I took a train at Bonar 
Bridge, in the north of Scotland, south- 
ward bound. There was a cold wind blowing, 
and Bonar Bridge is about the latitude, as I 
learned from looking at my atlas, of northern 
Labrador — farther north, in fact, than I had 
ever in my lifetime dreamed of going. 

I spent the next four or five hours looking out 
of a car window across the bleak, brown moors, 
studying the flocks of sheep and the little thatch- 
roofed cottages clinging to the lonesome hill- 
sides. 

Three days later I was in the beautiful moun- 
tain region below Dresden, on my way to 
Prague, the capital of Bohemia. In many 
ways conditions in the farming regions of 
Bohemia are quite as primitive as they are 
among the crofters of northern Scotland. There 
are, for example, a larger number of small 
farmers owning their own land in Bohemia than 

53 



54 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

there are in Scotland, but the Scottish crofter, 
although he remains a tenant on a large estate, 
has, at the present time, a more secure position 
on the soil than the man who rents his land in 
Bohemia. In other respects the Scotch High- 
landers, whose country I had just left, and the 
Czechs, whose country I was just entering, are, 
I should say, about as different as one could 
well imagine. 

Among other things I noticed that the farm- 
ing people in this part of the world do not live 
apart, scattered about in the open country, as 
they do in Scotland, and as is the case every- 
where in America. On the contrary, the 
Bohemian farmers live huddled together in 
little villages, in the centre of the surrounding 
fields, from which they go out to their work in 
the morning and to which they return in the 
evening. 

These different manners of settling on the 
soil are one of the marks by which the people 
in the north of Europe are distinguished from 
those in the south. The northern people settle 
in widely scattered homesteads, while the 
southern people invariably herd together in 
little villages, and each individual becomes, to 
a great extent, dependent upon the community 
and loses himself in the life about him. This 
accounts, in large measure, for the difference 



LIFE AND LABOUR ON THE CONTINENT 55 

in character of the northern and southern 
people. In the north the people are more in- 
dependent; in the south they are more social. 
The northern people have more initiative; they 
are natural pioneers. The southern people 
are more docile, and get on better under the 
restraints and restrictions of city life. It is 
said, also, that this explains why it is that the 
people who are now coming to America from 
the south of Europe, although most of them 
come from the land, do not go out into the 
country districts in America, but prefer to live 
in the cities, or, as seems to be the case with 
the Italians, colonize the suburbs of the great 
cities. 

Another thing that interested me was the 
sight of women working on the land. I had not 
gone far on my way south from Berlin before 
my attention was attracted by the number of 
women in the fields. As I proceeded south- 
ward, the number of these women labourers 
steadily increased until they equalled and even 
outnumbered the men. One of these I had 
an opportunity to see close at hand; she was 
coarsely clad, barefoot, and carried a rake over 
her shoulder. I had seen pictures of something 
like that before, but never the real thing. 

Outside of Italy I have rarely seen men going 
barefoot either in the country or in the city, 



56 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

but in southern Europe it seems to be the cus- 
tom among the working women, and I took it 
as an indication of the lower position which 
women occupy among the people of southern 
Europe as compared with the position that they 
occupy in America. I saw many barefoot 
women later in the course of my journey, both 
in the field and elsewhere. I confess, however, 
I was surprised to meet in Vienna, Austria, as I 
did on several occasions while I was there, 
women walking barefoot on the pavements in 
one of the most fashionable streets of the city. 
One day, in speaking to a native Austrian, I 
expressed my surprise at what I had seen. 
"Oh, well," he replied, "they are Slovaks." 
How vividly this reminded me of a parallel 
remark with which I was familiar, "Oh, well, 
they are Negroes!" 

It was the tone of this reply that caught my 
attention. It emphasized what I soon dis- 
covered to be another distinguishing feature of 
life in southern Europe. Everywhere I went 
in Austria and Hungary I found the people 
divided according to the race to which they 
belonged. There was one race at the top, an- 
other at the bottom, and then there were per- 
haps two or three other races which occupied 
positions relatively higher or lower in between. 
In most cases it was some section of the Slavic 



LIFE AND LABOUR ON THE CONTINENT 57 

race, of which there are some five or six different 
branches in the Austrian Empire, which was at 
the bottom. 

Several times, in my efforts to find out some- 
thing about these so-called "inferior people," 
I made inquires about them among their more 
successful neighbours. In almost every case, no 
matter what race it happened to be to which 
I referred, I received the same answer. I was 
told that they were lazy and would not work; 
that they had no initiative; that they were im- 
moral and not fitted to govern themselves. At 
the same time, I found them doing nearly all the 
really hard, disagreeable, and ill-paid labour 
that was being done. Usually I found, also, 
that with fewer opportunities than the people 
around them, they were making progress. 

I was frequently surprised at the bitterness 
between the races. I have heard people talk 
more violently, but I do not think I have heard 
any one say anything worse in regard to the 
Negro than some of the statements that are 
made by members of one race in Austria in re- 
gard to members of some other. 

I reached the city of Prague late at night, 
and awoke next morning in a world that was 
utterly new to me. It was not that Prague 
looked so different from other European cities 
I had seen, but the language sounded more 



58 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

strange than anything else I had ever heard. 
I do not pretend to understand German, yet it 
seemed to me that there was something familiar 
and friendly about that language as compared 
with Czech. 

The Czechs are but one of the seventeen races 
of Austria-Hungary, each one of which, with 
the exception of the Jews, who are an exception 
to everything, is seeking to preserve its own 
language, and, if possible, compel all its neigh- 
bours to learn it. Preserving its own language is 
not difficult in the country districts, where each 
race lives apart in its own village and maintains 
its own peculiar customs and traditions. It is 
more difficult in the large cities like Vienna 
and Budapest, where the different nationalities 
come into intimate contact with each other and 
with the larger European world. 

There is a region in northeastern Hungary 
where in the course of a day's ride one may pass 
through, one after another, villages inhabited 
by as many as five different races — Ruthenians, 
Jews, Roumanians, Hungarians, and Germans. 
A racial map of the Dual Empire shows districts 
in which one race predominates, but these same 
districts will very likely be dotted with villages in 
which the fragments of other races still survive, 
some of them, like the Turks, so few in num- 
ber that they are not separately counted as 



LIFE AND LABOUR ON THE CONTINENT 59 

part of the population. Under these circum- 
stances travel in this part of the world is made 
interesting but not easy. 

Fortunately, I had letters of introduction to 
Dr. Albert W. Clarke, head of the Austrian 
branch of the American Board of Missions at 
Prague, and he introduced me to some of his 
native assistants who spoke English, and kindly 
assisted me in finding what I most desired to see 
of the city and the people. Through him I had 
an opportunity to get inside of some of the 
tenements in which European people live, and 
to see some of the working people in their homes. 
I did not have an opportunity to explore the 
parts of the city in which the very poor people 
live; in fact, I was told that there was nothing 
in Prague that corresponded to the slums of our 
English and American cities. There is much 
poverty, but it is poverty of a self-respecting 
sort — not of those who have been defeated and 
gone under, but of those who have never got 
up. 

I found the average Bohemian workman liv- 
ing in two rooms and working for wages con- 
siderably less than the same kind of labour 
would have brought in England, and very 
much less than the same kind of labour would 
have brought in America. There is, however, 
very little use in comparing the wages that 



60 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

men earn unless you are able to compare all the 
surrounding conditions. 

During my stay in Prague I had an op- 
portunity to see something close at hand of the 
life of the farming population. Under the 
guidance of one of Doctor Clarke's assistants I 
drove out one day to a little village where there 
were a number of people who had come under 
the influence of the American Mission in Prague, 
and where I was assured I should find a welcome. 

It was not, perhaps, the best place to get an 
idea of what is most characteristic in Bohemian 
country life. I had hoped to see something of 
the local customs of the country people, but, 
though it was a holiday when I made my visit, 
I did not see a single peasant costume. 

There are still many places in Bohemia, I 
understand, where the people take pride in 
wearing the national costumes, and there are 
still many parts of the Austrian Empire where 
relics of the older civilization linger. Indeed, I 
heard of places where, it is said, the peasants are 
still paying the old feudal dues; in other places 
the old unfree condition of the peasants is still 
continued in the form of peonage, as it may still 
be sometimes found in our Southern States. 
In this case the peasants have got themselves 
into debt for land. They are not allowed to 
work off this debt, and this serves as a pretence 



LIFE AND LABOUR ON THE CONTINENT 61 

for keeping them bound to the soil. But edu- 
cation and the growth of manufacturing in- 
dustries have banished the traces of the older 
civilization from the greater part of Bohemia. 

In the village which I visited, as in most of 
the farmfng villages in this part of the world, 
the houses of the farmers stand in a row quite 
close together on either side of the street. In 
the rear are the quarters of the servants, the 
storehouses and the stables, the pig-stys and the 
cow-stalls, all closely connected, so that it was 
often a little uncertain to me where the quarters 
for the servants left off and those for the ani- 
mals began. In fact, in some places no very 
definite distinction was made. 

One of the most interesting places that I 
visited during my stay in this village was a 
dairy farm which was conducted by a Jew. He 
was evidently one of those of the lower or middle 
class — a type one hears much of in Europe — 
who, with very little knowledge or skill in the 
actual work of agriculture, have succeeded by 
their superior business skill in getting possession 
of the land and reducing the peasant to a 
position not much better than that of a serf. 
This man not only kept a dairy farm but he 
operated two or three brickyards besides, and 
had other extensive business interests in the 
village. Although he was a man of wealth and 



62 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

intelligence, he had his dwelling in the midst 
of a compound around which were grouped 
houses for his labourers, cow-stalls, a wheel- 
wright and blacksmith shop, places for pigs, 
chickens, and dogs, the whole in a condition of 
indescribable disorder and tilth. 

The greater part of the work on the farm 
seemed to be done by women, most of whom 
were barefooted or wore wooden shoes. I do 
not think I have seen any one wearing wooden 
shoes before since the days of slavery. They 
had remained in my mind as the symbol of 
poverty and degradation; but they are worn 
everywhere in country districts in Europe. In 
fact, I remember in one instance, when I visited 
an agricultural school, finding one of the teachers 
working in the garden wearing wooden shoes. 
The people who worked on this farm all lived, 
as far as I could see, in one little ill-smelling and 
filthy room. There was no sign in the homes 
which I visited of those household industries 
for which Hungarian peasants are noted, and 
which should help to brighten and make com- 
fortable the simplest home. 

I believe there are few plantations in our 
Southern States where, even in the small one- 
room cabins, one would not find the coloured 
people living in more real comfort and more 
cleanliness than was the case here. Even in 



LIFE AND LABOUR ON THE CONTINENT 63 

the poorest Negro cabins in the South I have 
found evidences that the floor was sometimes 
scrubbed, and usually there was a white counter- 
pane on the bed, or some evidence of an effort 
to be tidy. 

Prague is one of the most ancient cities in 
Europe. A thing that impressed me with the 
antiquity of the town was the fact that before 
the beginning of the Christian era there was a 
Jewish quarter in this city. Prague is also one 
of the most modern cities in Europe. Within 
a comparatively few years large manufacturing 
plants have multiplied throughout the country. 
Bohemia makes, among other things, fezzes, 
and sells them to Turkey; raises beans, and ships 
them to Boston. 

What is most interesting is the fact that this 
progress has been, to a very large extent, made 
possible through the education of the masses of 
the people. The Bohemians are to-day among 
the best educated people in Europe. For ex- 
ample, among the immigrants who come from 
Europe to America, 24.2 per cent, over fourteen 
years of age are unable to read and write. In 
the case of the German immigrant not more 
than 5.8 per cent, are unable to read or write. 
In the case of the Bohemians the percentage of 
illiteracy is only 3 per cent. There is only one 
class of immigrants among whom the percentage 



64 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

of illiteracy is lower. Among the Danish im- 
migrants it is 0.8 per cent. 

There is no part of the Austrian Empire where 
education is more generally diffused or where 
the schools are so well adapted to the actual 
needs of the people. In addition to the or- 
dinary primary schools and the gymnasia 
(which correspond to our high schools) there are 
several higher institutes of technology which 
prepare students for industry and commerce. 
Besides these state schools there are a large 
number of industrial schools that are main- 
tained by cities or by private associations. 
Some of these are located in the small towns 
and are closely connected with the local in- 
dustries. Sometimes they are organized by 
the members of the different trades and crafts 
as a supplement to the apprentice system. For 
example, in a town where the inhabitants are 
engaged in the clay industry, there will be found 
schools which give practical courses in the mak- 
ing of vases and crockery. In some of the larger 
towns commercial and industrial instruction is 
given in "continuation schools." In these 
schools girls who have learned needlework in 
the elementary schools will be taught sewing, 
dressmaking, and embroidery and lace work. 
There are also courses in which boys are pre- 
pared to work in the sugar-making, brewing, 



LIFE AND LABOUR ON THE CONTINENT 65 

watchmaking, and other manufacturing indus- 
tries. 

In the two institutes of technology in Prague, 
one of which is for Bohemians and the other 
for Germans, courses are given which prepare 
students to be engineers, chemists, machinists, 
architects, bookkeepers, etc. In connection 
with these courses there are also special de- 
partments where students are prepared to be 
master workmen in such trades as bricklaying, 
carpentry, cabinet-making, and stone masonry. 

There is much in the life and history of the 
Bohemian people that is especially interesting 
to a race or a people like the Negro, that is 
itself struggling up to a higher and freer level 
of life and civilization. 

Up to 1848 the masses of the Bohemian 
people were held in a condition of serfdom. 
Until 1867 they were not allowed to emigrate 
from the country, and were thus held, as are 
the Russian peasants to-day, to a certain degree, 
prisoners in their own country. Most of the 
land was in the hands of the nobility, who were 
the descendants of foreigners who came into 
the country when it was conquered, a century 
or more before. Even to-day five families 
own 8 per cent, of all the land in the kingdom, 
and one tenth of the population owns 36 per 
cent, of the area of the country. The Emperor 



66 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

and the Catholic Church are also large land- 
owners. 

One of the effects of this new education and 
the new life that has come with it has been to 
make the land held in larger estates less pro- 
ductive than that which is divided into smaller 
holdings and cultivated by the men who own it. 

It was interesting to me to learn that the 
Bohemians in their own country suffer from 
some of the same disadvantages as the Negro 
in the South. For example, the educational 
fund is divided between the races — the Ger- 
mans and the Czechs — just as the money for 
education is divided in the South between the 
whites and the blacks, but, as is true in the 
South, it is not divided equally between the 
races. 

For example, in the city of Prague there is 
one gymnasium (school) to every 62,000 Czech 
inhabitants, while the Germans have one gymna- 
sium for every 6,700 inhabitants. Of what are 
called the real-schools, in which the education 
is more practical than that of the gymnasia, 
there is one for every 62,000 Bohemian inhabi- 
tants, while the Germans have one for every 
10,000 inhabitants. For a number of years 
past, although the Bohemians represent 70 per 
cent, of the population, they have received only 
a little more than one half of the money appro- 



LIFE AND LABOUR ON THE CONTINENT 67 

priated for secondary education, both in the 
gymnasia and the real-schools. The salaries of 
teachers in the elementary schools range from 
$155 to $400 per year; in the schools in which the 
German language is taught, however, teachers 
receive an added bonus for their services. 

To overcome their disadvantages in this 
direction the Czechs have supplemented the 
work of the public schools by industrial schools, 
which are maintained by the contributions of 
the people in the same way that the Negroes 
in many parts of the South have supplemented 
the work of the public schools in order to in- 
crease the terms of the school year and to intro- 
duce industrial training of various sorts. 

More than this, the masses of the people in 
Bohemia are limited and restricted in all their 
movements in ways of which no one in America 
who has not passed through the hands of the 
immigration inspectors at Ellis Island has any 
comprehension. For example, the people of 
Austria have had for a number of years freedom 
of conscience, and, in theory at least, every one 
is allowed to worship according to his own 
inclination and convictions. Nevertheless, it 
seems to be as much a crime in Austria to say 
anything that could be construed as disrespect- 
ful to the Catholic Church as it would be to 
insult the name of the Emperor. I heard a 



68 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

story of a woman who ran a small store in which 
she was using copies of a Catholic newspaper 
with which to wrap up articles which she had 
sold to her customers. She was warned by the 
police that if she continued to use this paper 
for that purpose she would be liable to arrest. 
Afterward packages were found in her store 
which were wrapped in this paper; she was 
arrested and the case was carried to the highest 
court, but the sentence which had been imposed 
upon her stood, and she was compelled to serve 
a term in prison as punishment for this offence. 
It was only with the greatest difficulty, Doctor 
Clarke informed me, that he succeeded in getting 
permission from the Government to establish 
a branch of the Young Men's Christian Asso- 
ciation in Prague. 

I myself had some experience of these re- 
strictions when I spoke before an audience com- 
posed largely of young Bohemian workmen in 
the rooms of this same Young Men's Christian 
Association. In order that I might be per- 
mitted to make this address it was necessary to 
announce the subject to the officers of the Gov- 
ernment three days before I arrived in the city, 
and at the meeting I had the unusual experience 
of having my words taken down by a Government 
official who was present to see that I did not say 
anything that would disturb the public peace. 



LIFE AND LABOUR ON THE CONTINENT 6g 

Not knowing what else I could say to this 
audience that would interest them, I told 
briefly the story of my own life and of the work 
that we are trying to do for our students at 
Tuskegee. I told them also that the institution 
(Hampton Institute) in which I had gained my 
education had been established by the same 
American Board of Missions which was respon- 
sible for the existence of the Young Men's 
Christian Association in Bohemia. 

In order that my hearers might understand 
what I said, it was necessary for the secretary 
of the association, a Bohemian who spoke very 
good English, to translate my words sentence 
by sentence. In spite of these difficulties I 
do not think I ever spoke to an audience of 
labouring people who were more intelligent or 
more appreciative. It was a great pleasure and 
satisfaction to me to be able to speak to this 
audience. I felt, as I think they did, that we 
had something in common which others, per- 
haps, could not entirely understand, because 
each of us belonged to a race which, however 
different in other respects, was the same in this: 
that it was struggling upward. 



CHAPTER V 



POLITICS AND RACES 



IN PRAGUE, the capital of Bohemia, I came 
in contact for the first time with the ad- 
vance guard, if I may use the expression, 
of a new race, the Slavs. I say a new race, 
because although the Slavic peoples claim an 
antiquity as great as that of any other race in 
Europe, the masses of the race seem just now 
emerging from a condition of life more primitive 
than that of almost any other people in Europe. 
Many little things, not only what I saw with 
my own eyes, but what I heard from others, 
gave me the impression, as I travelled south- 
ward, that I was entering into a country where 
the masses of the people lived a simpler and more 
primitive existence than any I had seen else- 
where in Europe. I remember, for one thing, 
that I was one day startled to see, in the neigh- 
bourhood of the mining regions of Bohemia, a 
half-dozen women engaged in loading a coal 
barge — shovelling the coal into wheelbarrows 
and wheeling them along a narrow plank from 
the coal wharf to the ship alongside. 

70 






POLITICS AND RACES 71 

I was impressed, again, by the fact that 
several of the peoples of the Austrian Em- 
pire — the Moravians and Ruthenians are 
an illustration — still preserve their old tribal 
names. Certain other of these peoples still 
keep not only the tribal names, but many of the 
old tribal customs. Among most of the Slavic 
peoples, for example, custom still gives to the 
marriage ceremony the character of barter 
and sale. In fact, I found that in one of the 
large provincial towns in eastern Hungary the 
old "matrimonial fairs" are still kept up. On 
a certain day in each year hundreds of mar- 
riageable young women are brought down to 
this fair by their parents, where they may be 
seen seated on their trunks and surrounded by 
the cattle they expect to have for a dowry. 
Naturally young men come from all the sur- 
rounding country to attend this fair, and 
usually a lawyer sits out under a tree nearby 
prepared to draw up the marriage contract. 
In some cases as many as forty marriages are 
arranged in this way in a single day. 

Divided into petty kingdoms or provinces, 
each speaking a separate language, living for 
the most part in the country districts, and held 
in some sort of political and economic sub- 
jection, sometimes by the descendants of foreign 
conquerors, and sometimes, as in the case of 



72 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

the Poles, by the nobility of their own race, 
the masses of the Slavic peoples in southern 
Europe have lived for centuries out of touch 
with the life of • cities, and to a large extent out 
of touch with the world. Compared, there- 
fore, with the peoples of western Europe, who 
are living in the centres of modern life and prog- 
ress, the Slavic peoples are just now on the 
horizon. 

In the course of my travels through Austria 
and Hungary I think I met, at one time or an- 
other, representatives of nearly every branch 
of the Slavic race in the empire. In Bohemia 
I became acquainted, as I have said, with the 
most progressive portion of the race, the Czechs. 
In Galicia I saw something of the life of the 
Polish people, both in the towns and in the 
country districts. Again, in Budapest and 
Vienna I learned something of the condition 
of the labouring and peasant classes, among 
whom the Slavic peoples are usually in the 
majority. At Fiume, the port of Hungary, 
from which forty thousand emigrants sail every 
year for the United States, I met and talked 
with Dalmatians, Croatians, Slovenes, Rutheni- 
ans, and Serbs — representatives, in fact, of 
almost every race in Hungary. In the plains of 
central Hungary, and again in eastern Prussia, 
I saw gangs of wandering labourers, made up of 



POLITICS AND RACES 73 

men and women who come to this part of the 
country from the Slavic countries farther south 
and east to take part in the harvest on the 
great estates. 

During this time I became acquainted to 
some extent also with representatives of al- 
most every type of civilization, high and low, 
among the peoples of southern Europe, from 
the Dalmatian herdsmen, who lead a rude and 
semi-barbarous existence on the high, barren 
mountains along the coast of the Adriatic, to 
the thrifty and energetic artisans of Bohemia 
and the talented Polish nobility, who are said to 
be among the most intellectual people in Europe. 

I did not, among these classes I have men- 
tioned, see the most primitive people of the 
Slavic race, nor the type of the man of that 
race farthest down. In fact, I have heard that 
in the mountain regions of southern Galicia 
there are people who make their homes in holes 
in the ground or herd together in little huts 
built of mud. I did not see, either, as I should 
like to have seen, the life of those Slavic people 
in southwestern Hungary who still hold their 
lands in common and live together in patriarchal 
communities, several families beneath one roof, 
under the rule of a " house father" and a "house 
mother," who are elected annually to govern 
the community. 



74 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

What little I did see of the life of the dif- 
ferent branches of the race gave me the im- 
pression, however, of a people of great possibil- 
ities, who, coming late into the possession of 
modern ideas and modern methods, were every- 
where advancing, in some places rapidly and 
in others more slowly, but always making prog- 
ress. 

One thing that has hindered the advancement 
of the Slavs has been the difference in the 
languages spoken by the different branches of 
the race. So great an obstacle is this difference 
of language that some years ago, when a con- 
gress of all the Slavic peoples was held at 
Prague, the representatives of the different 
branches of the race, having no common tongue, 
were compelled to speak to each other in the 
one language that they all professed to hate — 
namely, German. 

Another thing that has hindered the progress 
of the Slavs has been the inherited jealousies 
and the memories they cherish of ancient in- 
juries they have inflicted on one another in 
times past. In general, it seems to be true of 
the races of Austria-Hungary that each race 
or branch of the race hates and despises every 
other, and this hatred is the more bitter the 
more closely they are associate^. For example, 
there is a long-standing ^ „:ween the 



POLITICS AND RACES 75 

Polish peasants and the Polish nobility. This 
division is so great that the Polish peasants 
have frequently sided against the Polish nobility 
in the contests of the latter with the central 
government of Austria. However, this sen- 
timent of caste which separates the two classes 
of the Polish people is nothing compared with 
the contempt with which every Pole, whether he 
be peasant or noble, is said to feel for every Ruthen- 
ian, a people with whom the Pole is very closely 
•related by blood, and with whom he has long 
been in close political association. On the 
other hand, the Ruthenian in Galicia looks 
upon the Pole just as the Czech in Bohemia 
looks upon his German neighbour: as his bitter- 
est enemy. The two peoples refuse to inter- 
mingle socially; they rarely intermarry; in 
many cases they maintain separate schools, 
and are represented separately in the Imperial 
Parliament, each race electing its own repre- 
sentatives. But all are united in hating and 
despising the Jew, who, although he claims for 
himself no separate part of the empire, and has 
no language to distinguish himself from the 
other races about him, still clings as tenaciously 
as any other portion of the population to his 
own racial traditions and customs. 

The Slavic peoples, otherwise divided by 
language 2 J J ition, are also divided by 



76 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

religion. People speaking the same language, 
and sharing in other respects the same tra- 
ditions, are frequently just as widely separated 
by differences of religion as they could be by 
differences of race. For example, among the 
southern Slavs the majority of the Slovenes and 
the Croatians are Roman Catholics, others are 
Protestants. On the other hand, the majority 
of the Serbs, their close neighbours, are mem- 
bers of the Greek Orthodox Church, while 
others are Mohammedans. So wide is the 
division between the Roman Catholic and the 
Orthodox Slavs that in some cases members of 
the Eastern and Western branches of the Church 
belonging to the same nationality wear a dif- 
ferent costume in order to emphasize the 
differences of religion that might otherwise be 
forgotten or overlooked. 

In Galicia there are not only the Roman and 
Orthodox branches of the Church, but there are 
also three or four other minor branches. One 
of these, the Uniates, which is a compromise 
between the two and is intended to be a sort of 
link between the Eastern and Western churches, 
is now, it is said, just as distinct from both as 
any of the other branches of the Church. In 
this region, which has been the battleground 
of all the religions in Europe, religious distinc- 
tions play a much more important role than they 



POLITICS AND RACES 77 

do elsewhere, because the masses of the people 
have not yet forgotten the bitterness and the 
harshness of the early struggles of the sects. 
The result is that religious differences seem 
to have intensified rather than to have softened 
the racial animosities. 

In spite of the divisions and rivalries which 
exist, there seems to be growing up, under the 
influence of the struggle against the other and 
dominant races in the Empire, and as a result 
of the political agitations to which this struggle 
has given rise, a sense of common purpose and 
interest in the different branches of the Slavic 
race; a sort of racial consciousness, as it is 
sometimes called, which seems to be one of the 
conditions without which a race that is down 
is not able to get the ambition and the courage 
to rise. 

It is the presence of this great Slav race in 
western Europe, groping its way forward under 
the conditions and difficulties which I have 
described, that constitutes, as well as I am 
able to define it, the race problem of southern 
Europe. 

In many respects the situation of the Slavs 
in the Austro-Hungarian Empire and in southern 
Europe generally is more like that of the Negroes 
in the Southern States than is true of any other 
class or race in Europe. For one thing, the 



78 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

vast majority of that race are, like the Negroes, 
an agricultural people. For centuries they 
have lived and worked on the soil, where they 
have been the servants of the great landowners, 
looked down upon by the educated and higher 
classes as "an inferior race." Although they 
were not distinguished from the dominant 
classes, as the Negro was, by the colour of their 
skin, they were distinguished by the language 
they spoke, and this difference in language 
seems to have been, as far as mutual under- 
standing and sympathy are concerned, a greater 
bar than the fact of colour has been in the case 
of the white man and the black man in the 
South. 

Up to a comparatively few years ago an 
educated Slav did not ordinarily speak, at least 
in public, the language of the masses of the 
people. Doctor Clarke, the head of the Austrian 
Mission of the American Board in Prague, told 
me that as recently as thirty years ago an 
educated Czech did not care to speak his own 
language on the streets of Prague. At that 
time the German language was still the language 
of the educated classes, and all the learning of 
Europe was, to a very large extent, a closed 
book to the people who did not speak and read 
that language. 

To-day conditions have so changed, Doctor 



POLITICS AND RACES 79 

Clarke tells me, that the people in certain quar- 
ters of Prague scowl at any one who speaks 
German on the street. 

" When we go to visit an official of the Govern- 
ment," said Doctor Clarke, "we usually inquire, 
first of all, which language this particular official 
prefers to speak, German or Czech. It is wise 
to do this because most of the officials, par- 
ticularly if they represent the central govern- 
ment of Vienna, speak German; but a Czech 
who is loyal to his race will not speak the hated 
German unless he has to do so." 

Doctor Clarke told me, as illustrating the 
fanaticism of the Bohemian people in this 
matter of language, that his little girls, who had 
been educated in German schools and preferred 
to speak that language among themselves, had 
more than once been hooted at, and even stoned, 
by young Bohemians in the part of the town 
where he lives, because they spoke a language 
which the masses of the people had been brought 
up to hate. 

Another way in which the situation of the 
Slavic people resembles, to a certain extent, 
that of the masses of the Negroes in the South- 
ern States, is in the matter of their political 
relations to the dominant races. Both in 
Austria and in Hungary all the races are sup- 
posed to have the same political privileges, and, 



So THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

in the case of Austria at least, the Government 
seems to have made a real effort to secure equal 
rights to all. Here, again, racial and tra- 
ditional prejudices, as well as the wide dif- 
ferences in wealth and culture of the different 
peoples, have kept the political power in Aus- 
tria proper in the hands of the Germans, and 
in Hungary in the hands of the Magyars. 

What makes the situation more difficult for 
the dominant races in these two countries is 
the fact that the so-called inferior peoples are 
increasing more rapidly than the other races 
in numbers, and the Germans and Magyars 
are every year becoming a smaller minority 
in the midst of the populations which they are 
attempting to control. The result has been 
that the empire seems to the one who looks on 
from the outside a seething mass of discontent, 
with nothing but the fear of being swallowed 
up by some of their more powerful neighbours 
to hold the nationalities together. 

There is one respect in which the situation 
of the Negro in America is entirely different 
from the various nationalities of Austria and 
Hungary. The Negro is not compelled to get 
his education through the medium of a language 
that is foreign to the other people by whom he 
is surrounded. The black man in the South 
speaks the same tongue and professes the 



POLITICS AND RACES 81 

same religion as the white people. He is not 
seeking to set up any separate nationality for 
himself nor to create any interest for himself 
which is separate from or antagonistic to the 
interest of the other people of the United States. 
The Negro is not seeking to dominate politically, 
at the expense of the white population, any 
part of the country which he inhabits. Al- 
though he has suffered wrongs and injustices, he 
has not become embittered or fanatical. Com- 
petition with the white race about him has 
given the Negro an ambition to succeed and 
made him feel pride in the successes he has al- 
ready achieved; but he is just as proud to be' an 
American citizen as he is to be a Negro. He 
cherishes no ambitions that are opposed to the 
interests of the white people, but is anxious to 
prove himself a help rather than a hindrance 
to the success and prosperity of the other race. 

I doubt whether there are many people in 
our Southern States who have considered how 
much more difficult the situation in the South- 
ern States would be if the masses of the black 
people spoke a language different from the 
white people around them, and particularly 
if, at the same time, they cherished political 
and social ambitions that were antagonistic 
to the interests of the white man. 

On the other hand, I doubt whether the 



82 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

Negro people realize the advantage which they 
have in speaking one of the great world lan- 
guages, the language, in fact, that is more 
largely used than any other by the people who 
are most advanced in science, in the arts, and 
in all that makes the world better. English is 
not only a great world language, it is the lan- 
guage of a people and a race among whom the 
highest are neither afraid nor ashamed to 
reach down and lift up the lowest, and help 
them in their efforts to reach a higher and a 
better life. 

In the south of Europe conditions are quite 
different. The languages spoken there, so far 
from helping to bring people together, are the 
very means by which the peoples are kept apart. 
Furthermore, the masses of the people of Aus- 
tria speak languages which, until a hundred 
years ago, had almost no written literature. Up 
to the beginning of the last century the educated 
people of Hungary spoke and wrote in Latin, 
and down to the middle of the century Latin 
was still the language of the Court. Until 
1848 there were almost no schools in the Czech 
language in Bohemia. Up to that time there 
were almost no newspapers, magazines, or books 
printed in the language spoken by the masses 
of the people. 

It has been said that the written or literary 



POLITICS AND RACES 83 

languages of the Slavic people have been, with one 
or two exceptions, almost created during the past 
hundred years. In fact, some of the Slavs, al- 
though they have a rich oral literature, still have, 
I have been told, no written languageoftheirown. 

A great change has been brought about in 
this respect in recent years. At the present 
time, of the 5,000 periodicals printed in Austria- 
Hungary, about 2,000 are printed in German, 
938 in Magyar, 582 in Czech, and the remain- 
ing 1,480 are in some five or six other languages. 
The Magyar language is now taught in all the 
schools of Hungary, whether some other lan- 
guage is taught at the same time or not. Out- 
side of Hungary, in Austria proper, there are 
some 8,000 exclusively German schools, 5,578 
Czech, and 6,632 schools in which are taught 
other Slav dialects, not to speak of the 645 
schools in which Italian is taught, the 162 
schools in which Roumanian is taught, and the 
5 in which Magyar is taught. 

To an outsider it seems as if the purpose of 
these schools must be to perpetuate the existing 
confusion and racial animosities in the empire. 
On the other side, it must be remembered that 
it has been an enormous advantage to the 
masses of the people to be able to read the lan- 
guage which they habitually speak. In fact, 
the multiplication of these different written 



84 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

languages, and of schools in which they are 
taught, seems to have been the only way of 
opening to the masses of the people the learning 
which had been before that time locked up in 
languages which they sometimes learned to 
read but rarely spoke. 

As I have considered the complications and 
difficulties, both political and economic, which 
not merely Austria but Europe has to face as a 
consequence of the different languages spoken 
by the different races, I have asked myself 
what would probably happen in our Southern 
States if, as some people have suggested, large 
numbers of these foreign peoples were induced 
to settle there. I greatly fear that if these 
people should come in large numbers and settle 
in colonies outside of the cities, where they 
would have comparatively few educational 
advantages and where they would be better 
able and more disposed to preserve their native 
customs and languages, we might have a racial 
problem in the South more difficult and more 
dangerous than that which is caused by the 
presence of the Negro. Whatever else one may 
say of the Negro, he is, in everything except 
his colour, more like the Southern white 
man, more willing and able to absorb the ideas 
and the culture of the white man and adapt him- 
self to existing conditions, than is true of 



POLITICS AND RACES 8$ 

any race which is now coming into this coun- 
try. 

Perhaps my attempt to compare racial con- 
ditions in southern Europe with racial con- 
ditions in the southern United States will seem 
to some persons a trifle strange and out of place 
because in the one case the races concerned are 
both white, while in the other case one is white 
and one is black. Nevertheless, I am convinced 
that a careful study of conditions as they exist in 
southern Europe will throw a great deal of light 
upon the situation of the races in our Southern 
States. More than that, strange and irrational as 
racial conflicts often seem, whether in Europe or 
in America, I suspect that at bottom they are 
merely the efforts of groups of people to readjust 
their relations under changing conditions. In 
short, they grow out of the efforts of the people 
who are at the bottom to lift themselves to a 
higher stage of existence. 

If that be so, it seems to me there need be 
no fear, under a free government, where every 
man is given opportunity to get an education, 
where every man is encouraged to develop in 
himself and bring to the service of the com- 
munity the best that is in him, that racial 
difficulties should not finally be adjusted, and 
white man and black man live, each helping 
rather than hindering the other. 



CHAPTER V 

STRIKES AND FARM LABOUR IN ITALY AND 
HUNGARY 

THERE is one English word which seems 
to be more widely known and used in 
Europe than almost any other. It is 
the word " strike." Labour strikes, I have 
understood, had their origin with the factory 
system in England. But the people on the 
Continent have improved on the original Eng- 
lish device, and have found ways of using it of 
which we in America, I suspect, have rarely 
if ever heard. 

It seems to me that during my short journey 
in Europe I heard of more kinds of strikes, and 
learned more about the different ways in which 
this form of warfare can be used, than I ever 
learned before in all my life. In Europe one 
hears, for example, of " political" strikes, of 
"general" strikes, and of "agricultural" strikes 
— harvest strikes — which are a peculiar and 
interesting variety of the ordinary labour strikes. 
There are rent strikes, "hunger riots," strikes 
of students, even of legislatures, and when I was 

86 



STRIKES AND FARM LABOUR 87 

in Budapest some one called my attention to an 
account in one of the papers of what was called 
a " house strike." 

This was a case in which the tenants of one 
of the large tenement buildings or apartment 
houses of the city had gone on strike to compel 
the landlord to reduce the rent. They had hung 
the landlord in effigy in the big central court 
around which the building is erected; decorated 
the walls and balconies with scurrilous placards, 
and then created such a disturbance by their 
jeers and outcries, supplemented with fish horns, 
that the whole neighbourhood was roused. The 
house strikers took this way to advertise their 
grievances, gain public sympathy, and secure 
reduction of the rent. 

I had an opportunity, during my stay in 
Europe, to get some first-hand information in 
regard to these continental strikes. I was in 
Berlin just before and after the three days' battle 
between the striking coalyard men of Moabit 
and the police, in the course of which several of 
the officers and hundreds of the people were 
wounded. For several days one section of 
Berlin was practically in a state of siege. The 
police charged the crowd with their horses, 
trampled the people under foot, and cut them 
down with their swords. The soldiers hunted 
the strikers into the neighbouring houses, where 



88 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

they attempted to barricade themselves and 
replied to the attacks of the police by hurling 
missiles from the windows of the houses into 
the streets below. At night the streets were 
in darkness, because the strikers had cut the 
electric wires, thus shutting off the lights, 
so that the police were compelled to carry 
torches in order to distinguish friends from 
foes. 

At another time, while I was in Fiume, Hun- 
gary, I had an opportunity to see for myself 
the manner and spirit in which these strikes are 
conducted, or, rather, the way in which they are 
put down by the police. 

I had gone out one day to visit the emigrant 
station, which is situated on the outskirts of the 
city, and noticed, on my way thither, a number 
of policemen on the car. Then, apparently at 
a signal from a man in charge, they seemed to 
melt away. Half an hour later, while I was at 
the emigrant station, I was startled by loud cries 
outside the building. Every one rushed to the 
windows. The street was crowded with men, 
women, and children, all running helter-skelter 
in the direction of the city. Some of the hands 
in a nearby factory had gone on strike. I 
could not at first understand why every one 
seemed in such a state of terror. Very soon I 
learned, however, that they were running from 



STRIKES AND FARM LABOUR 89 

the police, and a moment later the police them- 
selves moved into view. 

They were formed in a broad double line 
across the avenue, and, marching rapidly, simply 
swept everything before them. At their head, 
bearing a heavy cane, was a man in plain clothes. 
I do not know whether he was an officer or the 
proprietor of the factory, but I was struck with 
the haughty and contemptuous air with which 
he surveyed the rabble as it melted away from in 
front of him. In a few minutes the street was 
empty and, so far as I could see, the strike was over. 

It was a small affair in any case. There was 
no bloodshed and almost no resistance on the 
part of the strikers, so far as I could see. It was 
sufficient, however, to give me a very vivid 
notion of the ruthless way in which the govern- 
ments of these stern military powers deal with 
rebellious labourers. European governments 
seem to have the habit of interfering, in a way 
of which we have no conception in this country, 
in all the small intimate affairs of life. So it is 
not to be expected that they would be able, like 
the police in this country, to act as a neutral 
party or referee, so to speak, in the struggles 
of labour and capital. That is the reason, I sus- 
pect, why in Europe strikes almost always turn 
out to be a battle with the police or an insurrec- 
tion against the Government. 



9 o THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

Almost anything may be made the occasion 
of a strike in Europe, it seems. Sometimes in 
Austria and Hungary, as I learned, members of 
the local diets or provincial legislatures go on a 
strike and refuse to make any laws until certain 
demands have been complied with by the central 
government at Vienna. Sometimes the students 
in one or more of the national universities go on 
a strike because a favourite professor has been 
removed by the Government, or because they 
are opposed to some particular measure of the 
Government. Not infrequently, in France or 
Italy, labour disturbances are fomented for 
political or party purposes, particularly among 
the employees of the state railways. 

Strikes are a favourite weapon of the Socialists 
when they are seeking to force some political 
measure through parliament. Until a few years 
ago it seemed that the " general strike, " in which 
all the labourers of a city or several cities, by 
suddenly laying down their tools and refusing 
to return to their work, sought to force some 
concession by the Government, was the means 
by which the Socialists proposed to overturn 
all the existing governments in Europe. Since 
the failure of the revolution in Russia and of 
similar movements on a smaller scale in Italy 
and elsewhere, this form of strike seems to have 
fallen into disrepute. 






STRIKES AND FARM LABOUR 91 

The most novel and interesting form of labour 
insurrection which I found while I was in Europe 
was the "strike of the agricultural labourers." 
In both Hungary and Italy the agricultural 
labourers have for some years past been organ- 
ized into more or less secret societies, and the 
outbreaks which have been fomented by these 
secret societies have been, I understand, the 
most bloody and the most far-reaching in in- 
fluence of any labour strikes in Europe. 

The possibility that farm hands might be 
organized into labour unions, and make use of 
this form of organization in order to compel 
landowners to raise wages, had never occurred 
to me, and I took some pains to learn the con- 
ditions in Hungary and Italy under which these 
organizations have grown up. 

I found that while the situation of the farm 
hands in Hungary differs from that of the farm 
hands in Italy in many ways, there are two im- 
portant respects in which the situation of each 
is the same: First, a large part of the land of 
both countries is held in large estates; second, 
farm labourers, as a rule, particularly in Hun- 
gary, do not live, as is the case in America, on 
the land. On the contrary, they dwell apart in 
villages, so that they are hardly any more at- 
tached to the soil they cultivate than the factory 
hand is attached to the factory in which he is 



92 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

employed. In Hungary, for example, it is the 
custom for a group of labourers to enter, during 
the spring and summer, into a contract with a 
landowner to harvest his crop in the fall. A 
contractor, who either represents or employs 
the farm hands, will look over the field and 
bargain with the owner to do the work for a 
certain per cent, of the crop. At the harvest 
time the contractor will arrive with his labourers 
just as he would come with a gang of men to 
build a house or dig a ditch. While the work 
is going on the labourers, men and women to- 
gether, practically camp in the fields, sleeping 
sometimes in the open or in such scant shelter 
as they are able to find. 

It happened that I was in Hungary at the 
harvest time, and in the course of my journey 
through the country I have several times seen 
these gangs of men and women going to their 
work at daybreak. In this part of the country 
the strangest costumes are worn by the peasant 
people, and the women especially, with their 
bright kerchiefs over their heads, their short 
skirts and high boots, when they were not bare- 
foot, were quite as picturesque as anything I had 
read had led me to expect. The labourers go 
to work at early dawn, because during the 
harvest season the field hands work sometimes 
as much as fourteen to sixteen hours a day, and 



STRIKES AND FARM LABOUR 93 

then throw themselves down to rest for the night 
on a truss of straw or under a single blanket. 
After the harvest is over they return again to 
their villages. 

Working in this way in troups of wandering 
labourers, there was no room for any permanent 
human relationships between themselves and 
their employers; such relationships, for example, 
as exist, in spite of the differences of race and 
colour, between every white planter in the South 
and his Negro tenants. On the other hand, 
the labourers, working and living together in the 
way I have described, come to have a strong 
sense of their common interest, all the stronger, 
perhaps, because they are looked down upon 
by the rest of the population, and particularly 
by the small landowners with whom they were 
associated up to the time of their emancipation, 
in 1848. 

About 1890 a series of bad harvests — coming 
on the heels of other changes which, for a number 
of years, had made their lives steadily harder — 
helped to increase the discontent of the farm 
hands. Thus it was that when, about this time, 
the Socialists turned their attention to the 
agricultural population of Hungary, they found 
the people prepared to listen to their doctrines. 

What made Socialism the more popular among 
the lowest farming classes was the fact that it 



94 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

not only promised to teach the farm labourers 
how they might increase their wages, but de- 
clared that the state was going to take the land 
out of the hands of the large landowners and 
divide it among the people who cultivated it. 

What made the situation the more difficult 
was the fact that the agricultural labourers, as 
soon as they were thoroughly organized, had 
the landowners, during the harvest time, at a 
peculiar disadvantage, because when work in 
the fields stopped, the standing grain ripened 
and spoiled and the landowner was ruined. 

In the emergency created by these strikes the 
Government came to the rescue of the landowner 
by establishing recruiting stations for farm la- 
bourers in different parts of the country. Col- 
lecting labourers in those parts of the country 
where labour was abundant, they shipped it to 
other parts of the country where, because of 
strikes, labourers were scarce and crops were in 
danger. Thus, the Government had at one 
time a reserve force of not less than 10,000 strike- 
breakers with which it was at any moment able 
to come to the rescue of a landowner who was 
threatened. 

In many cases the Government undertook to 
regulate wages between landowners and their 
hands. In some cases they even sent troops 
into the fields, and in the course of the struggle 



STRIKES AND FARM LABOUR 95 

there were frequent bloody collisions between 
the labourers and the troops. 

One effect of these disturbances was to greatly 
increase the amount of immigration to America. 
In 1904, when the struggle was at its height, no 
less than 100,000 persons, mostly from the 
country districts, emigrated from Hungary. 
Thousands of others left the country and moved 
into the cities. 

Hungary is about half the size of Texas, and 
it has nearly five times its population. Those 
who remember the "Negro exodus" of thirty 
years ago, and the apprehension that was created 
when some 40,000 Negroes left the plantations in 
Mississippi and Louisiana, will be able to under- 
stand the effect if for a number of years the 
South should lose annually by emigration to the 
cities or to other parts of the country 100,000 
of its labourers in the cotton fields. 

The exodus of the farm labourer from Hungary 
threatened, in spite of the rapid increase of the 
population, to permanently check the rising 
prosperity of the country. It was soon found 
that the great landowners could not rely upon 
repressive measures alone to solve their labour 
problems. Something must be done to redress 
the grievances and to improve the condition 
of the agricultural population. As a matter of 
fact, a very great deal was done by the state for 



96 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

agriculture, and something was done for the ag- 
ricultural labourers. For example, relief funds 
were organized in sixty-four counties and bor- 
oughs to aid temporarily disabled workmen. 
Public prizes and diplomas were offered to la- 
bourers who were faithful to their masters. 

Something was done to brighten the monot- 
ony of the agricultural labourer's life and to 
strengthen the ties between the labourers and 
their employers. At the suggestion of the 
Minister of Agriculture, an attempt was made 
to revive the harvest feasts, which brought the 
farmer and his labourers together. Working- 
men's clubs, libraries, friendly and cooperative 
societies were encouraged by the Government. 
A popular weekly paper, printed in seven dif- 
ferent languages, was started for the benefit of 
agricultural labourers and as a means of agri- 
cultural education. A bill for insurance against 
accidents and old age for the benefit of agricul- 
tural labourers provided that if a labourer loses 
more than a week's time he shall receive, in 
addition to the expenses of doctor and medicine, 
a sum amounting to about 25 cents a day for 
sixty days. In case of death of an agricultural 
labourer, his family receives a sum amounting 
to something between #40 and $50. 

In Italy, the Socialistic movement among the 
agricultural classes took a somewhat different 



STRIKES AND FARM LABOUR 97 

course. For one thing, it was not confined 
merely to the poorest class — namely, those 
labourers who live in the villages and go out 
at certain seasons to assist in the work on 
the farms — but extended to the small pro- 
prietors also, and those who rented land. In 
many cases the large estates in Italy are not 
managed as in Hungary, by the proprietor, but 
by middlemen and overseers, who pay a certain 
amount of rent to the proprietor and then sublet 
to tenants. Sometimes, particularly in southern 
Italy, lands are sublet a second and third time. 

In many cases the terms upon which the land 
was held and worked by the small farmer were 
terribly oppressive, even in northern Italy, 
where conditions are incomparably better than 
in the south. 

Although the peasants in northern Italy 
were nominally given their freedom in 1793, 
their condition, until a few years ago, has 
been described by one who was himself a 
large land proprietor as "little better than if 
they were slaves." In addition to the high 
rents, the tenant farmer was compelled to furnish 
the overseer with a certain number of chickens 
and eggs, and a certain amount of peaches, nuts, 
figs, hemp and flax, in proportion to the amount 
of land he rented. 

The overseer claimed, also, just as the over- 



9 8 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

lord did in the days of feudalism, the rights to 
the labour of the peasant and his ox-cart for a 
certain part of every year. His children were 
expected to work as servants in his household at 
a nominal price. The overseer sold the crop of 
the tenant farmer, and, after deducting all that 
was coming to him for rent and for other charges, 
returned the remainder to the tenant farmer as 
his share of the year's work. 

In one case where, as a result of the revolt 
of his tenants the middleman was driven out, 
the tenant farmer, under the direction of the 
Socialist leaders, undertook to rent the land 
directly from the landowners, it was found that 
the middleman had been appropriating not less 
than 48 per cent, of the profits, which, under 
the new arrangement, went directly into the 
hands of the man who tilled the soil. 

For a number of years there had existed among 
the small farmers numerous societies for mutual 
aid of various kinds. After the Socialists began 
to turn their attention to the agricultural popu- 
lation they succeeded in gaining leadership iri 
these societies and used them as a means of 
encouraging agricultural strikes. It was from 
these same societies also that they recruited the 
members of those organizations of farm labourers 
and tenants which have attempted to form large 
estates on a cooperative basis. By this means 



STRIKES AND FARM LABOUR 99 

the small farmer has been able to do away with 
the middleman and still retain the advantages 
which result, particularly in harvesting and 
marketing the crops, from conducting the 
operations on a large scale. 

In recent years cooperative organizations of 
all kinds have multiplied among the small 
farmers of northern Italy. There are societies 
for purchasing supplies as well as for disposing 
of the products of the small farmers; the most 
important of these societies have been, perhaps, 
the cooperative credit organizations, by means 
of which small landowners have been able to 
escape the burden of the heavy interest charges 
they were formerly compelled to pay. 

I was interested to learn that both the Govern- 
ment and the Socialists were at different times 
opposed to these cooperative societies, although 
for different reasons. The Socialists were op- 
posed to cooperation because by removing the 
causes of discontent it sapped the revolutionary 
spirit of the farming classes. The Government, 
on the other hand, was opposed to the coopera- 
tive societies because their leaders were so 
frequently revolutionists who were using the 
society to stimulate discontent and organize the 
movement to overthrow the Government. 

The great general strike of September, 1904, 
which resulted in practically putting an end, for 



ioo THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

five days, to all kinds of business industries in 
the city of Milan, was provoked by the state 
police firing upon some peasants who were hold- 
ing a meeting to pay their shares and take their 
lots in an agricultural cooperative society. 

I have attempted to describe at some length 
the character of the Socialistic movement as 
I found it in Hungary and Italy, because it 
represents on the whole the movement of the 
masses at the bottom of life in Europe. Through 
this party, for the first time, millions of human 
beings who have had no voice in and no definite 
ideas in respect to the Government under which 
they lived are learning to think and to give ex- 
pression to their wants. 

Few people, I venture to say, have any definite 
notion to what extent the most remote parts of 
Europe, from which the majority of our immi- 
grants now come, have been penetrated by the 
ideas and the sentiments of the Socialistic party. 
There are, for example, some five or six different 
branches of the party in Bohemia. Socialism, 
I learn, has made its way even into such coun- 
tries as Roumania, Servia, Bulgaria, and Dal- 
matia, where perhaps three fourths of the pop- 
ulation are engaged in agriculture. 

There are, however, as I discovered, various 
kinds and types of Socialism. I think I saw 
during my journey across Europe as many dif- 



STRIKES AND FARM LABOUR 101 

ferent kinds of Socialists as I did kinds of Jews, 
which is saying a good deal. In Denmark and 
Italy, for example, I met men of the very highest 
type who were members of the Socialist party. 
In Copenhagen I was entertained by the editors 
of the Socialistic paper, The Politiken, which is 
perhaps the most ably edited and influential 
paper in Denmark. In Italy many of the most 
patriotic as well as the most brilliant men in 
the country, writers, students, and teachers, are 
members of the Socialist party. 

In Poland, on the other hand, I met other 
Socialists who had taken an active part in the 
revolution in Russia and who, for aught I know, 
were members of that group of desperate men 
who are said even now to be plotting from Cra- 
cow, Austria, a new revolutionary movement 
among the agricultural classes in Russia. 

In short, I found that where the masses of the 
people are oppressed, where the people at the 
bottom are being crushed by those who are above 
them, there Socialism means revolution. On the 
other hand, where governments have shown a 
liberal spirit, and especially where the Socialists 
have had an opportunity to participate in the 
Government, or have been able, by means of the 
cooperative societies I have described, to do con- 
structive work for the benefit of the masses, 
they have ceased to be revolutionists, have no 



io2 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

longer sought to overturn the Government, but 
have patriotically striven to strengthen the 
existing order by freeing it from those defects 
that were dangerous to its existence. 

In saying this, I do not mean to imply that 
I in any way favour the Socialistic programme 
of reform. I live in the Southern States, a part 
of the country which, more than any other part 
of the civilized world, still believes that the best 
government is the government that governs 
least; the government that you can wear like an 
old coat, without feeling it. More than that, I 
believe that the best and only fundamental way 
of bringing about reform is not by revolution, 
not through political machinery that tries to 
control and direct the individual from the out- 
side, but by education, which gets at the in- 
dividual from within; in short, fits him for life 
but leaves him free. 

There is much in the history of the agricultural 
labourers of Hungary and Italy that is interest- 
ing to any one who has studied the condition of 
the Negro farm labourer in the South. In many 
respects their history has been the same. There 
is, however, this difference: When the serfs 
were freed in Hungary, as in most other parts of 
Europe, provision was made to give them land, 
though to a very large extent they were denied the 
political privileges enjoyed by the upper classes. 



STRIKES AND FARM LABOUR 103 

In Italy also it was intended, in giving the serfs 
freedom, to give them likewise land. Again, when 
the vast estates of the Church were taken over 
by the State, an attempt was made to increase 
the class of small owners and to give the land to 
the people who tilled it. In both cases, however, 
it was but a few years before the greater portion 
of the peasant owners were wiped out and their 
lands absorbed into the large estates. At the 
present time the small landowners, under the 
influence of education 'and agricultural organiza- 
tion, are gaining ground, and both countries, 
in the interest of agriculture, are seeking to en- 
courage this movement. 

The case of the Negro was just the opposite. 
When the masses of the Negro people were 
turned loose from slavery they carried in their 
hands the ballot that they did not know how to 
use, but they took no property with them. At 
the present time, I believe, by a conservative 
estimate, that the Negroes in the South own not 
less than twenty million acres of land, an area 
equal to the five New England States of Ver- 
mont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode 
Island, and Connecticut. 

On the other hand, the Negroes have largely 
lost, at least temporarily, many of the political 
privileges which were given them at emancipa- 
tion. The experience of the peasants of Europe, 



io 4 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

just as the experience of the Negro in America, 
has served to confirm an opinion I have long 
held — namely, that it is very hard for a man 
to keep anything that he has not earned or does 
not know how to use. And in most cases, the 
best way and, in fact, the only way to insure 
any people in the possession either of property 
or political privileges is to fit them by education 
to use these gifts for their own good and for the 
highest good of the community in which they 
live. 

The peasants were given land without effort 
on their part and soon lost it. The masses of 
the Negroes were given the ballot without 
effort on their part and they soon lost it. The 
peasants are now gradually gaining the land 
through their own effort and are keeping it. 
The masses of Negroes are gradually gaining 
the ballot through their own effort, and are 
likely to keep it when so gained. 



CHAPTER VII 

NAPLES AND THE LAND OF THE EMIGRANT 

I HAD crossed Europe from north to south 
before I got my first glimpse of an emigrant 
bound for iVmerica. On the way from 
Vienna to Naples I stopped at midnight at 
Rome, and in the interval between trains I 
spent an hour in wandering about in the soft 
southern air — such air as I had not found any- 
where since I left my home in Alabama. 

In returning to the station my curiosity was 
aroused, as I was passing in the shadow of the 
building, by what seemed to me a large vacant 
room near the main entrance to the station. As 
I attempted to enter this room I stumbled over 
the figure of a man lying on the stone floor. 
Looking farther, I saw something like forty or 
fifty persons, men as well as women, lying on 
the floor, their faces turned toward the wall, 
asleep. 

The room itself was apparently bare and 
empty of all furniture. There was neither a 
bench nor a table, so far as I could see, in any 
part of the room. It seems that, without any 

105 



106 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

expectation of doing so, I had wandered into 
the room reserved for emigrants, and came acci- 
dentally upon one of the sights I most wanted 
to see in Italy — namely, a party of emigrants 
bound for America. 

As near as I could learn, these people were, 
for the most part, peasants, who had come in 
from the surrounding country, carrying what 
little property they possessed on their backs or 
tied up in little bundles in their arms, and were 
awaiting the arrival of the train that was to take 
them to the port from which they could take 
ship for America. 

I confess it struck me as rather pathetic that, 
in this splendid new and modern railway station, 
in which the foreign traveller and the native 
Italian of the upper classes were provided with 
every convenience and luxury, so little thought 
had been given to the comfort of these humble 
travellers, who represent the people in Italy who 
pay proportionately most of the taxes, and who, 
by their patient industry and thrift, have con- 
tributed more than any other class to such prog- 
ress as Italy has made in recent years. 

Later on I had an opportunity to pass through 
the country from which perhaps the majority 
of these emigrants had come. I travelled 
through a long stretch of country where one 
sees only now and then a lonesome shepherd or 



\ 



THE LAND OF THE EMIGRANT 107 

a wretched hut with one low room and a cow- 
stall. I also visited some of the little villages 
which one sees clinging to the barren hilltops, 
to escape the poisonous mists of the plains below. 
There I saw the peasants in their homes and 
learned something of the way in which the lowly 
people in the rural districts have been neglected 
and oppressed. After that I was able to under- 
stand that it was no special hardship that these 
emigrants suffered at Rome. Perhaps many 
of them had never before slept in a place so 
clean and sanitary as the room the railway 
provided them. 

Early the next morning, as my train was ap- 
proaching Naples, my attention was attracted 
by the large number of women I saw at work in 
the fields.* It was not merely the number of 
women but the heavy wrought-iron hoes, of a 
crude and primitive manufacture, with which 
these women worked that aroused my interest. 
These hoes were much like the heavy tools I 
had seen the slaves use on the plantations before 
the Civil War. With these heavy instruments 
some of the women seemed to be hacking the 
soil, apparently preparing it for cultivation; 
others were merely leaning wearily upon their 
tools, as if they were over-tired with the exertion. 
This seemed quite possible to me, because the 
Italian women are slighter and not as robust as 



io8 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

the women I had seen at work in the fields in 
Austria. 

I inquired why it was that I saw so many 
women in the fields in this part of the country, 
for I had understood that Italian women, as a 
rule, did not go so frequently into field work 
as the women do in Austria and Hungary. I 
learned that it was because so many of the men 
who formerly did this work had emigrated to 
America. As a matter of fact, three fourths 
of the emigration from Italy to America comes 
from Sicily and the other southern provinces. 
There are villages in lower Italy which have 
been practically deserted. There are others 
in which no one but women and old men are 
left behind, and the whole population is more 
than half supported by the earnings of Italian 
labourers in America. There are cities within 
twenty miles of Naples which have lost within 
ten years two thirds of their inhabitants. • In 
fact, there is one little village not far from the 
city of which it is said that the entire male 
population is in America. 

Ten days later, coming north from Sicily, I 
passed through the farming country south of 
Naples, from which large numbers of emigrants 
go every year to the United States. It is a sad 
and desolate region. Earthquakes, malaria, an- 
tiquated methods of farming, and the general 



THE LAND OF THE EMIGRANT 109 

neglect of the agricultural population have all 
contributed to the miseries of the people. The 
land itself — at least such portion of it as I 
saw — looks old, wornout, and decrepit; and 
the general air of desolation is emphasized when, 
as happened in my case, one comes suddenly, 
in the midst of the desolate landscape, upon 
some magnificent and lonely ruin representing 
the ancient civilization that flourished here 
two thousand years ago. 

Statistics which have been recently collected, 
after an elaborate investigation by the Italian 
Government, show that, in a general way, the 
extent of emigration from southern Italy is in 
direct ratio to the neglect of the agricultural 
classes. Where the wages are smallest and the 
conditions hardest, there emigration has reached 
the highest mark. In other words, it is precisely 
from those parts of Italy where there are the 
greatest poverty, crime, and ignorance that the 
largest number of emigrants from Italy go out 
to America, and, I might add, the smallest 
number return. Of the 511,935 emigrants who 
came to North and South America from Italy 
in 1906, 380, 615 came from Sicily and the south- 
ern provinces. 

One of the most interesting experiences I had 
while in Europe was in observing the number 
of different classes and races there are in Europe 



no THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

who look down upon, and take a hopeless view 
of, certain of their neighbours because they 
regard them as inferior. For example, one of 
the first things I learned in Italy was that the 
people in northern Italy look down upon the 
people of southern Italy as an inferior race. I 
heard and read many times while I was in Italy 
stories and anecdotes illustrating the childish- 
ness, the superstition, and the ignorance of the 
peasant people and the lower classes generally 
in southern Italy. In fact, nothing that I have 
known or heard about the superstition of the 
Negro people in America compares with what 
I heard about the superstition of the Italian 
peasants. What surprised me more was to 
learn that statistics gathered by the Italian 
Government indicate that in southern Italy, 
contrary to the experience of every other coun- 
try, the agricultural labourers are physically 
inferior to every other class of the population. 
The people in the rural districts are shorter of 
stature and in a poorer condition generally than 
they are in the cities. 

For all these reasons I was the more anxious 
to learn for myself what these people were like. 
I wanted to find out precisely in what this in- 
feriority of the southern Italian consisted, be- 
cause I knew that these people were very largely 
descended from the ancient Greeks, who, by 






THE LAND OF THE EMIGRANT in 

reputation at least, were the most gifted people 
the world has ever known. 

The city of Naples offers some advantages 
for studying the southern population, since it is 
the port at which the stream of emigration from 
the small towns and farming districts of the 
interior reaches the sea. The exportation of 
labourers to America is one of the chief busi- 
nesses of that city. It was at Naples, then, that 
I gained my earliest first-hand acquaintance 
with the Italians of the south. 

I think the thing that impressed me most 
about Naples was the contrast between the 
splendour of its natural surroundings, the ele- 
gance and solidity of its buildings, and the 
dirt, disorder, and squalor in which the masses 
of the people live. It was early morning when 
I arrived in the city for the first time. The sun, 
which was just rising over the black mass of 
Vesuvius, flooded the whole city and the sur- 
rounding country with the most enchanting 
light. In this soft light the gray and white 
masses of the city buildings, piled against the 
projecting hillside to the right and stretching 
away along the curving shores to the left, made 
a picture which I shall never forget. 

Some of this sunshine seemed to have got into 
the veins of the people, too, for I never saw any- 
where so much sparkle and colour, so much 



ii2 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

life and movement, as I did among the people 
who throng the narrow streets of Naples. I 
never heard before so many curious human 
noises or saw such vivid and expressive gestures. 
On the other hand, I never saw anywhere before 
so many beggars, so many barefooted men, so 
many people waiting at the station and around 
the streets to pick up a casual job. It seemed to 
me that there were at least six porters to every 
passenger who got off the train, and these porters 
were evidently well organized, for I had the 
experience of seeing myself and my effects 
calmly parcelled out among half a dozen of 
them, every one of whom demanded, of course, 
a separate fee for his services. 

My experience in Europe leads me to con- 
clude that the number of casual labourers, 
hucksters, vagabonds, and hunters of odd jobs 
one meets in a city is a pretty good index of the 
condition of the masses of the people. By this 
measure I think that I should have been able 
to say at the outset that there was in Naples 
a larger class living in the dirt, degradation, 
and ignorance at the bottom of society than in 
any other city I visited in Europe. I make this 
statement even though cities like Catania and 
Palermo, in Sicily, which are surrounded by an 
agricultural population just as wretched, are little, 
if any, better than Naples in this respect. 



THE LAND OF THE EMIGRANT 113 

Very few persons who go to Naples merely as 
sightseers ever get acquainted, I suspect, with 
the actual conditions of the people. Most trav- 
ellers who see Naples are carried away by the 
glamour of the sunshine, the colour, and the 
vivacity of the Italian temperament. For that 
reason they do not see the hard struggle for 
existence which goes on in the narrow streets 
of the city, or, if they do, they look upon the 
shifts and devices to which this light-hearted 
people are driven in order to live as merely part 
of the picturesqueness of the southern life and 
people. 

I have been more than once through the slums 
and poorer quarters of the coloured people of 
New Orleans, Atlanta, Philadelphia, and New 
York, and my personal observation convinces 
me that the coloured population of these cities 
is in every way many per cent, better off than 
the corresponding classes in Naples and the 
other Italian cities I have named. As far as 
the actual hardships they have to endure or the 
opportunities open to them, the condition of the 
Negroes in these cities does not compare, in my 
opinion, with that of the masses of the Italians 
in these southern Italian cities. 

There is this difference also: the majority of 
the Negroes in the large cities of the South and 
North in the United States are from the coun- 



ii 4 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

try. They have been accustomed to range and 
wander in a country where life was loose and 
simple, and existence hardly a problem. They 
have not been accustomed to either the com- 
forts or the hardships of complex city life. In 
the case of the Italians, life in the crowded, 
narrow streets, and the unsanitary intimacy 
and confusion in which men, goats, and cattle 
here mingle, have become the fixed habit of 
centuries. 

It is not an unusual thing, for instance, to find 
a cow or a mule living in close proximity, if 
not in the same room, with the rest of the family, 
and, in spite of the skill and artistic taste which 
show themselves everywhere in the construction 
and decoration of the buildings, the dirt and 
disorder in which the people live in these build- 
ings are beyond description. Frequently, in 
passing through the streets of these southern 
cities, one meets a herd of goats wandering 
placidly along over the stone pavements, nib- 
bling here and there in the gutters or holding up 
in front of a house to be milked. 

Even where the city government has made the 
effort to widen and improve the streets, let in 
air and sunlight, and maintain sanitary con- 
ditions, the masses of the people have not yet 
learned to make use of these conveniences. I 
recall, in passing along one of these streets, in 



THE LAND OF THE EMIGRANT 115 

the centre of the city, which had been recently 
laid out with broad stone sidewalks and built 
up with handsome three and four story stone 
buildings, seeing a man and a cow standing on 
the sidewalk at the corner of the street. It 
seemed to me that the natural thing would have 
been to let the cow stand in the street and not 
obstruct the sidewalk. But these people evi- 
dently look upon the cow as having the same 
rights as other members of the population. 
While the man who owned the cow was engaged 
in milking, a group of women from the neigh- 
bouring tenements stood about with their 
pitchers and gossiped, awaiting their turn at the 
cow. 

This method of distributing milk — namely, 
by driving the animal to the front door and 
milking while you wait — has some advantages. 
It makes it unnecessary to sterilize the milk, 
and adulteration becomes impracticable. The 
disadvantage is that, in order to make this 
method of milk delivery possible, the cow and 
the goat must become city dwellers and live 
in the same narrow streets with the rest of the 
population. Whatever may be true of the goat, 
however, I am sure that the cow is not naturally 
adapted to city life, and where, as is true in many 
instances, whole families are forced to crowd 
into one or two rooms, the cow-stall is likely to 



n6 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

be still more crowded. Under these conditions 
I am sure that the average cow is going to be 
neither healthy nor happy. 

For my purposes it is convenient to divide 
the life of Naples into three classes. There is 
the life of the main avenues or boulevards, where 
one sees all that is charming in Neapolitan life. 
The buildings are handsome, streets are filled 
with carriages, sidewalks are crowded with 
handsomely dressed people. Occasionally one 
sees a barefooted beggar asleep on the marble 
steps of some public building. Sometimes one 
sees, as I did, a woman toiling up the long street 
side by side with a donkey pulling a cart. There 
are a good many beggars, but even they are 
cheerful, and they hold out their hands to you 
with a roguish twinkle in their eyes that some- 
how charms the pennies out of your pocket. 

Then there is the life of the narrower streets, 
which stretch out in an intricate network all 
over the older part of the city. Many of these 
streets contain the homes as well as the work- 
shops of the artisan class. Others are filled with 
the petty traffic of hucksters and small trades- 
men. In one street you may find a long row 
of pushcarts, with fish and vegetables, or strings 
of cheap meat dangling from cords, surrounded 
by a crowd, chaffering and gesticulating — Nea- 
politan bargain-hunters. In another street you 



THE LAND OF THE EMIGRANT 117 

will find, intermingled with the little shops, 
skilled artisans with their benches pushed half 
into the street, at work at their various tasks. 
Here you will see a wood-carver at his open 
doorway, busily engaged in carving out an ele- 
gant bit of furniture, while in the back of the 
shop his wife is likely to be engaged in getting 
the midday meal. A little farther along you 
may meet a goldsmith, a worker in iron or in 
copper. One is making a piece of jewellery, 
the other is mending a kettle. In these streets 
one sees, in fact, all the old handicrafts carried 
on in much the same manner and apparently 
with the same skill that they were carried on 
three hundred years ago. 

Finally, there are the narrower, darker, dirtier 
streets which are not picturesque and into which 
no ordinary traveller ventures. This seldom- 
visited region was, however, the one in which I 
was particularly interested, for I had come to 
Naples to see the people and to see the worst. 

In the neighbourhood of the hotel where I 
stayed there was a narrow, winding street which 
led by a stone staircase from the main thorough- 
fare up the projecting hillside to one 1 of those 
dark and obscure alleyways for which Naples, 
in spite of the improvements which 'have been 
made in recent years, is still noted. Near the 
foot of the stairs there was a bakery, and not 



n8 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

far away was the office of the State Lottery. 
The little street to which I refer is chiefly 
inhabited by fishermen and casual labourers, 
who belong to the poorest class, of the city. 
They are the patrons also of the lottery and the 
bakery, for there is no part of Naples that is so 
poor that it does not support the luxury of a 
lottery; and, I might add, there are few places 
of business that are carried on in a filthier manner 
than these bakeries of the poorer classes. 

I was passing this place late in the afternoon, 
when I was surprised to see a huckster — I 
think he was a fish vender — draw up his wagon 
at the foot of this stone staircase and begin un- 
hitching his mule. I looked on with some 
curiosity, because I could not, for the life of me, 
make out where he was going to put that ani- 
mal after he had unhitched him. Presently the 
mule, having been freed from the wagon, turned 
of his own motion and began clambering up the 
staircase. I was so interested that I followed. 

A little way up the hill the staircase turned 
into a dark and dirty alleyway, which, however, 
was crowded with people. Most of them were 
sitting in their doorways or in the street; some 
were knitting, some were cooking over little 
charcoal braziers which were placed out in the 
street. One family had the table spread in the 
middle of the road and had just sat down very 



THE LAND OF THE EMIGRANT 119 

contentedly to their evening meal. The street 
was strewn with old bottles, dirty papers, and 
all manner of trash; at the same time it was 
filled with sprawling babies and with chickens, 
not to mention goats and other household 
appurtenances. The mule, however, was evi- 
dently familiar with the situation, and made his 
way along the street, without creating any sur- 
prise or disturbance, to his own home. 

I visited several other streets during my stay 
in Naples which were, if possible, in a worse 
condition than the one I have described. In a 
city where every one lives in the streets more 
than half the time, and where all the intimate 
business of life is carried on with a frankness and 
candour of which we in America have no con- 
ception, there is little difficulty in seeing how 
people live. I noted, for example, instances 
in which the whole family, to the number of six 
or seven, lived in a single room, on a dirt floor, 
without a single window. More than that, this 
one room, which was in the basement of a large 
tenement house, was not as large as the average 
one-room Negro cabin in the South. In one of 
these one-room homes I visited there was a 
blacksmith shop in one part of the room, while 
the family ate and slept in the other part. The 
room was so small that I took the trouble to 
measure it, and found it 8 x 13 feet in size. 



120 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

Many of these homes of the poorer classes are 
nothing better than dark and damp cellars. 
More than once I found in these dark holes sick 
children and invalid men and women living in a 
room in which no ray of light entered except 
through the open door. Sometimes there would 
be a little candle burning in front of a 
crucifix beside the bed of the invalid, but 
this flickering taper, lighting up some pale, 
wan face, only emphasized the dreary sur- 
roundings. It was a constant source of sur- 
prise to me that under such conditions these 
people could be so cheerful, friendly, and ap- 
parently contented. 

I made some inquiry as to what sort of amuse- 
ments they had. I found that one of the prin- 
cipal forms of amusement of this class of people 
is gambling. What seems stranger still, this vice 
is in Italy a Government monopoly. The state, 
through its control of the lottery, adds to the 
other revenue which it extracts from the people 
not less than five million dollars a year, and 
this sum comes, for the most part, from the 
very poorest part of the population. 

There are, it seems, something like 1,700 or 
i, 800 offices scattered through the several large 
cities of Italy where the people may buy lottery 
tickets. It seemed to me that the majority of 
these offices must be in Naples, for in going 



THE LAND OF THE EMIGRANT 121 

about the city I saw them almost everywhere, 
particularly in the poorer quarters. 

These lottery offices were so interesting that 
I determined to visit one myself and learn how 
the game was played. It seems that there is a 
drawing every Saturday. Any one may bet, what- 
ever amount he chooses, that a number some- 
where between one and ninety will turn up in 
the drawing. Five numbers are drawn. If you 
win, the lottery pays ten to one. You may also 
bet that any two of the five numbers drawn will 
turn up in succession. In that case, the bank 
pays the winner something like fifty to one. 
You may also bet that three out of five will turn 
up, and in case you win the bank pays 250 times 
the amount you bet. Of course the odds are 
very much against the player, and it is estimated 
that the state gets about 50 per cent, of all the 
money that is paid in. The art of the game 
consists, according to popular superstition, in 
picking a lucky number. In order to pick a lucky 
number, however, one must go to a fortune-teller 
and have one's dreams interpreted, or one must 
pick a number according to some striking event, 
for it is supposed that every event of any im- 
portance suggests some lucky number. Of course 
all this makes the game more interesting and 
complicated, but it is, after all, a very expensive 
form of amusement for poor people. 



122 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

From all that I can learn, public sentiment 
in Italy is rapidly being aroused to the evils 
which cling to the present system of dealing with 
the agricultural labourer and the poorer classes. 
But Italy has not done well by her lower classes 
in the past. She has oppressed them with heavy 
taxes; has maintained a land system that has 
worn out the soil at the same time that it has 
impoverished the labourer; has left the agri- 
cultural labourers in ignorance; has failed to 
protect them from the rapacity of the large 
landowners; and has finally driven them to seek 
their fortunes in a foreign land. 

In return, these emigrants have repaid their 
native country by vastly increasing her foreign 
commerce, by pouring back into Italy the earn- 
ings they have made abroad, by themselves 
returning with new ideas and new ambitions 
and entering into the work of building up the 
country. 

These returned emigrants have brought 
back to the mother country improved farming 
machinery, new methods of labour, and new 
capital. Italian emigrants abroad not only 
contribute to their mother country a sum esti- 
mated at between five and six million dollars 
annually, but Italian emigration has awakened 
Italy to the value of her labouring classes, and 
in doing this has laid the foundation for the 



THE LAND OF THE EMIGRANT 123 

prosperity of the whole country. In fact, Italy 
is another illustration that the condition of the 
man at the bottom affects the life of every class 
above him. It is to the class lowest down that 
Italy largely owes what prosperity she has as 
yet attained. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE LABOURER AND THE LAND IN SICILY 

AMONG the things that make Sicily 
interesting are its ruins. There are 
dead cities which even in their decay are 
larger and more magnificent than the living 
cities that have grown up beside them — 
larger and more magnificent even than any 
living city in Sicily to-day. There are relics 
of this proud and ancient past everywhere in 
this country. 

In the modern city of Catania, for example, 
I came suddenly one day upon the ruins of the 
forum of a Roman city which was buried under 
the modern Italian one. At Palermo I learned 
that when the members of the Mafia, which is 
the Sicilian name for the " Black Hand," want 
to conceal a murder they have committed, they 
put the body in one of the many ancient tombs 
outside the city, and leave it there for some 
archaeologist to discover and learn from it the 
interesting fact that the ancient inhabitants 
of Sicily were in all respects like the modern 
inhabitants. 

. 124 



THE LABOURER IN SICILY 125 

Among the other antiquities that one may 
see in Sicily, however, is a system of agricul- 
ture and method of tilling the soil that is two 
thousand years old. In fact, some of the tools 
still in use in the interior of the island are older 
than the ruins of those ancient heathen tem- 
ples, some of which were built five centuries 
before Christ. These living survivals, I con- 
fess, were more interesting to me than the dead 
relics of the past. 

These things are not easy to find. The guide- 
books mention them, but do not tell you where 
to look for them. Nevertheless, if one looks 
long enough and in the right place it is still 
possible to see in Sicily men scratching the field 
with an antique wooden plow, which, it is said, 
although I cannot vouch for that, is mentioned 
in Homer. One may see a Sicilian farmer 
laboriously pumping water to irrigate his cab- 
bage garden with a water-wheel that was im- 
ported by the Saracens; or one may see, as I 
did, a wine press that is as old as Solomon, and 
men cutting the grapes and making the wine 
by the same methods that are described in the 
Bible. 

It was my purpose in going to Sicily to see, 
if possible, some of the life of the man who works 
on the soil. I wanted to get to the people who 
lived in the little villages remote from the 



126 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

larger cities. I was anxious to talk with some 
of these herdsmen I had seen at a distance, 
wandering about the lonesome hillsides, tend- 
ing their goats and their cows and perhaps 
counting the stars as the shepherds did in the 
time of Abraham. As there are some 800,000 
persons engaged in agriculture in one way or 
another, it did not seem to me that this would 
be difficult. In spite of this fact, if I may judge 
by my own experience, one of the most difficult 
persons to meet and get acquainted with in this 
country, where many things are strange and 
hard to understand, is the man who works out 
in the open country on the land. 

Even after one does succeed in finding this 
man, it is necessary to go back into history two 
or three hundred years and know a great deal 
about local conditions before one can under- 
stand the methods by which he works and 
thinks. In fact, I constantly had the feeling 
while I was in Sicily that I was among people 
who were so saturated with antiquity, so out of 
touch, except on the surface, with modern life, 
so imbedded in ancient habits and customs, 
that it would take a very long time, perhaps 
years, to get any real understanding of their 
ways of thinking and living. 

In saying this I do not, of course, refer to the 
better classes who live in the cities, and espe- 



THE LABOURER IN SICILY 127 

cially I do not refer to the great landowners, who 
in Sicily do not live on the land, but make their 
homes in the cities and support themselves from 
the rents which are paid them by overseers or 
middlemen, to whom they usually turn over 
the entire management of their properties. 

Nevertheless, in spite of the difficulties I 
have mentioned, I did get some insight into the 
condition of the rural agricultural classes in 
Sicily — namely, the small landowner and 
the agricultural labourer — and I can perhaps 
best tell what I learned by starting at the 
beginning. 

The first thing I remember seeing of Sicily 
was a long black headland which stretches out 
into the sea like a great black arm toward the 
ships that approach Palermo from Naples. 
After that the dark mass of the mainland, bare 
and brown and shining in the morning light, 
seemed to rise suddenly out of the smooth and 
glittering sea. A little later, the whole splendid 
panorama of the beautiful bay of Palermo lay 
stretched out before me. 

I recall this picture now because it suggests 
and partly explains the charm which so many 
travellers find in this island, and because it 
stands out in contrast with so much that I saw 
later when I visited the interior. 

Sicily is, in this, like a great many other 



128 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

places I saw in Europe: it looks better on the 
outside than it looks on the in. All the large 
cities in Sicily are situated on a narrow rim of 
fertile land which encircles the island between 
the mountains and the sea. Palermo, for ex- 
ample, is situated on a strip of this rim which 
is so rich that it is called the "Shell of Gold." 
In this region, where the soil is constantly en- 
riched from the weathering of the neighbouring 
mountains, and where agriculture has been car- 
ried to the highest perfection that science and the 
skill of man can bring it, are situated those won- 
derful orange and lemon groves for which Sicily is 
famous. As an illustration of what irrigation 
and intensive culture can do in this soil, it is 
stated that the value of the crop in this par- 
ticular region has been increased by irrigation 
from $8 to £160 an acre. 

When one goes to Sicily to look at the ag- 
riculture it is this region that one sees first. 
During my first day in Palermo I drove through 
miles of these magnificent fruit farms, all laid 
out in the most splendid style, surrounded by 
high stone walls, the entrance guarded by heavy 
iron gates, and provided with extensive works 
for supplying constant streams of water to the 
growing fruit. The whole country, which is 
dotted with beautiful villas and winter palaces, 
is less like a series of fruit farms than it is like 



THE LABOURER IN SICILY 129 

one vast park. Here the fruit ripens practically 
the whole year round. The trees are heavy 
all winter with growing fruit, and one can 
wander for hours through a forest of lemon and 
orange trees so closely crowded together that 
the keen rays of the southern sun can scarcely 
penetrate their foliage. 

Palermo, however, like many other European 
cities in which the masses of the people are 
just now emerging out of the older civilization 
into the newer modern life, is divided into an 
old and a new city. There is the northern end, 
with broad streets and handsome villas, which 
the people call the "English Garden." This 
is the new city and the quarter of the wealthy 
classes. Then at the southern end there is the 
old city, with crowded, narrow and often mis- 
erably dirty streets, which is the home of the 
poorer class. 

After visiting one or two of the estates in 
the suburbs at the northern end of the city, I 
determined to see some of the truck farms of 
the smaller farmers which I had heard were 
located at the south end of the city. I made 
up my mind, also, if possible, to get out into 
the country, into the wilder and less settled 
regions, where I could plainly see from my hotel 
window the olive groves creeping up the steep 
mountainside and almost visibly searching out 



i 3 o THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

the crevices and sheltered places on the steep 
slopes in search of water, which is the one 
missing ingredient in the soil and climate of 
this southern country. 

Now one of the singular things about Palermo 
and some other cities in Sicily is that, as soon 
as you get to the edge of the town, you find 
yourself driving or walking between high stone 
walls which entirely shut out the view in every 
direction. We drove for an hour through 
these blind alleys, winding and twisting about 
without seeing anything of the country except 
occasionally the tops of the trees above the 
high stone walls that guarded the farms on 
either side. Occasionally we passed heavy 
iron gates which looked like the gates of a 
prison. Now and then we came upon a little 
group of houses built into the walls. These 
barren little cells, lighted only by an open door, 
looked as if they might be part of a prison, 
except for the number of sprawling children, 
the goats, and the chickens, and the gossiping 
housewives who sat outside their houses in the 
shadow of the wall sewing, or engaged in some 
other ordinary household task. There was 
scarcely a sprig of grass anywhere tp be seen. 
The roads frequently became almost impassable 
for wagons, and eventually degenerated into 
mere mule paths, through which it seemed al- 



THE LABOURER IN SICILY 131 

most impossible, with our carnage, to reach the 
open country. 

What added to the prison-like appearance 
of the place was the fact that, as soon as we 
approached the edge of the town, we met, every 
hundred yards or more, a soldier or a police 
officer sitting near his sentry box, guarding 
the approaches to the city. When I inquired 
what the presence of these soldiers meant, I 
was told that they were customs officers and 
were stationed there to prevent the smuggling 
of food and vegetables into the city, without 
the payment of the municipal tax which, it 
seems, is levied on every particle of produce 
that is brought into the city. I am sure that in 
the course of half an hour we met as many as 
twenty of these officers watching the highway 
for smugglers. 

As we proceeded, our driver, who had made 
several fruitless attempts, to turn us aside into 
an old church or cemetery, to see the "antee- 
chee," as he called it, grew desperate. When I 
inquired what was the trouble I learned that 
we had succeeded in getting him into a part of 
the city that he had never before visited in his 
whole life, and he was afraid that if he went too 
far into some of the roads in which we urged 
him to go he would never be able to get back. 
Finally we came to a road that appeared to lead 



i 3 2 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

to a spot where it seemed one could at least 
overlook the surrounding country. We urged 
him to go on, but he hesitated, stopped to in- 
quire the way of a passing peasant and then, 
as if he had made a mighty resolve, he whipped 
up his horse and said he would go on even if 
that road took him to "paradise." All this 
time we were not a quarter of a mile beyond the 
limits of the customs zone of the city. 

Finally we came, by good fortune, to a hole 
in one of the walls that guarded the highway. 
We stopped the carriage, got out, clambered 
up the steep bank and made our way through 
this hole into the neighbouring field. Then we 
straightened up and took a long breath because 
it seemed like getting out of prison to be able 
to look about and see something green and 
growing again. 

We had hardly put our heads through the 
hole in this wall, however, when we saw two or 
three men lying in the shade of a little straw- 
thatched hut, in which the guards sleep during 
the harvest season, to keep the thieves from 
carrying away the crops. As soon as these men 
saw us, one of them, who seemed to be the 
proprietor, arose and came toward us. We 
explained that we were from America and that 
we were interested in agriculture. As soon 
as this man learned that we were from 



THE LABOURER IN SICILY 133 

America he did everything possible he could 
to make us welcome. It seems that these men 
had just sat down to their evening meal, hich 
consisted of black bread and tomatoes. To- 
matoes seemed to be the principal part of the 
crop that this farmer was raising at that time. 
He invited us, in the politest manner possible, 
to share his meal with him and seemed greatly 
disappointed that we did not accept. Very 
soon he began telling the same story, which I 
heard so frequently afterward during my stay 
in Sicily. He had a son in America, who was 
in a place called Chicago, he said, and he wanted 
to know if I had ever heard of such a place and 
if so perhaps I might have met his son. 

The old man explained to me all about his 
farm; how he raised his crop and how he har- 
vested it. He had about two acres of land, as 
well as I could make out, for which he paid in 
rent about #15 per acre a year. This included, 
as I understood, the water for irrigation pur- 
poses. He admitted that it took a lot of work 
to make a living for himself, and the others who 
were helping him, from this small piece of land. 
It was very hard to live anywhere in Sicily, 
he said, but the people in Palermo were much 
better off than they were in other places. 

I asked him what he would do if his son should 
come back from America with a bag of money. 



i 3 4 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

The old man's face lighted up and he said 
promptly, "Get some land and have a little 
home of my own." 

Many times since then I have asked the same 
or similar questions of some man I met working 
on the soil. Everywhere I received the same an- 
swer. Everywhere among the masses of the 
people is this desire to get close to the soil and 
own a piece of land of their own. 

From where we stood we could look out over 
the country and see in several places the elab- 
orate and expensive works that had been erected 
for pumping water by steam for the purposes 
of irrigation. One of the small farmers I 
visited had a small engine in the back of his 
house which he used to irrigate a garden of 
cauliflower about four acres in extent. This 
man lived in a little low stone and stucco house, 
but he was, I learned, one of the well-to-do class. 
He had an engine for pumping water which 
cost him, he said, about #500. I saw as I 
entered his place a little stream of water, not 
much larger than my thumb, drizzling out of 
the side of the house and trickling out into the 
garden. He said it cost him between $4 and 
#5 a day to run that engine. The coal he used 
came from England. 

I had seen, as I entered the Palermo harbour, 
the manner in which this coal was unloaded, 



THE LABOURER IN SICILY 135 

and it gave me the first tangible evidence I had 
found of the cheapness of human labour in this 
over-populated country. Instead of the great 
machines which are used for that purpose in 
America and England, I learned, this work was 
all done by hand. 

In order to take this coal from the ship it 
was first loaded into baskets, which were swung 
over the side of the vessel and there piled upon 
a lighter. This lighter was then moved from 
the ships to the shore. The baskets were then 
lifted out by hand and the coal dumped on the 
wharf. From these it was reloaded into carts 
and carried away. It was this coal, handled 
in this expensive way, that this farmer was using 
to pump the water needed to irrigate his land. 

After leaving Palermo I went to Catania, at 
the other side of the island. The railway which 
climbs the mountains in crossing the island 
took me through a very different country and 
among very different people than those I had 
seen at Palermo. It was a wild, bare, moun- 
tainous region through which we passed; more 
bare, perhaps, at the time I saw it than at other 
times, because the grain had been harvested 
and plowing had not begun. There were few 
regular roads anywhere. Now and then the 
train passed a lonely water-wheel; now and then 
I saw, winding up a rocky footpath, a donkey 



136 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

or pack-mule carrying water to the sulphur 
mines or provisions to some little inland moun- 
tain village. 

Outside of these little villages, in which the 
farm labourers live, the country was perfectly 
bare. One can ride for miles through this 
thickly populated country without seeing a 
house or a building of any kind, outside of the 
villages. 

In Sicily less than 10 per cent, of the farming 
class live in the open country. This results 
in an enormous waste of time and energy. The 
farm labourer has to walk many miles to and 
from his labour. A large part of the year he 
spends far away from his home. During this 
time he camps out in the field in some of the 
flimsy little straw-thatched shelters that one 
sees scattered over the country, or perhaps he 
finds himself a nest in the rocks or a hole in the 
ground. During this time he lives, so to speak, 
on the country. If he is a herdsman, he has his 
cows' or goats' milk to drink. Otherwise his 
food consists of a piece of black bread and per- 
haps a bit of soup of green herbs of some kind 
or other. 

During my journey through this mountain 
district, and in the course of a number of visits 
to the country which I made later, I had oppor- 
tunity to learn something of the way these 



THE LABOURER IN SICILY 137 

farming people live. I have frequently seen 
men who had done a hard day's work sit down 
to a meal which consisted of black bread and a 
bit of tomato or other raw vegetable. In the 
more remote regions these peasant people 
frequently live for days or months, I learned, 
on almost any sort of green thing they find 
in the fields, frequently eating it raw, just like 
the cattle. 

When they were asked how it was possible 
to eat such stuff, they replied that it was good; 
"it tasted sweet," they said. 

I heard, while I was in Sicily, of the case of 
a woman who, after her husband had been sent 
to prison, supported herself from the milk she 
obtained from a herd of goats, which she pas- 
tured on the steep slopes of the mountains. Her 
earnings amounted to not more than 12 to 14 
cents a day, and, as this was not sufficient for 
bread for herself and her four children, she 
picked up during the day all sorts of green stuff 
that she found growing upon the rocks, and 
carried it home in her apron at night to fill the 
hungry mouths that were awaiting her return. 
Persons who have had an opportunity to care- 
fully study the condition of this country say it 
is incredible what sort of things these poor people 
in the interior of Sicily will put into their 
stomachs 



138 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

One of the principal articles of diet, in certain 
seasons of the year, is the fruit of a cactus called 
the Indian fig, which grows wild in all parts of 
the island. One sees it everywhere, either by 
the roadside, where it is used for hedges, or 
clinging to the steep cliffs on the mountainside. 
The fruit, which is about the size and shape 
of a very large plum, is contained in a thick, 
leathern skin, which is stripped off and fed to 
the cattle. The fruit within is soft and mushy 
and has a rather sickening, sweetish taste, 
which, however, is greatly relished by the coun- 
try people. 

One day, in passing through one of the sub- 
urbs of Catania, I stopped in front of a little 
stone and stucco building which I thought at 
first was a wayside shrine or chapel. But it 
turned out to be a one-room house. This house 
had a piece of carpet hung as a curtain in front 
of the broad doorway. In front of this curtain 
there was a rude table made of rough boards; 
on this table was piled a quantity of the Indian 
figs I have described and some bottles of some- 
thing or other that looked like what we in 
America call "pop." 

Two very good-looking young women were 
tending this little shop. I stopped and talked 
with them and bought some of the cactus fruit. 
I found it sold five pieces for a cent. They told 



THE LABOURER IN SICILY 139 

me that from the sale of this fruit they 
made about 17 cents a day, and upon this 
sum they and their father, who was an invalid, 
were compelled to support themselves. There 
were a few goats and chickens and two pigs 
wandering about the place, and I learned that 
one of the economies of the household consisted in 
feeding the pigs and goats upon the shells or 
husks of the Indian figs that were eaten and 
thrown upon the ground. 

As near as I could learn, from all that I heard 
and read, the condition of the agricultural 
population in Sicily has been growing steadily 
worse for half a century, at least. 

Persons who have made a special study of 
the physical condition of these people declare 
that this part of the population shows marked 
signs of physical and mental deterioration, due, 
they say, to the lack of sufficient food. For 
example, in respect to stature and weight, the 
Sicilians are nearly 2 per cent, behind the 
population in northern Italy. This difference 
is mainly due to the poor physical condition 
of the agricultural classes, who, like the ag- 
ricultural population of the southern mainland 
of Italy, are smaller than the population in the 
cities. 

In this connection, it is stated that con- 
siderably less than one third as much meat is 



i 4 o THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

consumed per capita in Sicily as in northern 
Italy. Even so, most of the meat that is eaten 
there is consumed in the hotels by the foreigners 
who visit the country. 

In looking over the budgets of a number of 
the small landowners, whose position is much 
better than that of the average farm labourer, 
I found that as much as #5 was spent for wine, 
while the item for meat was only $2 per year. 
There are thousands of people in Sicily, I 
learned, who almost never taste meat. The 
studies which have been made of the subject 
indicate that the whole population is underfed. 

Upon inquiry I found it to be generally ad- 
mitted that the condition of the population 
was due to the fact that the larger part of 
the land was in the hands of large landown- 
ers, who have allowed the ignorant and help- 
less peasants to be crushed by a system of 
overseers and middlemen as vicious and op- 
pressive as that which existed in many parts 
of the Southern States during the days of 
slavery. 

This middleman is called by Italians a gobel- 
lotto, and he seems to be the only man in Sicily 
who is getting rich out of the land. If a gobel- 
lotto has a capital of $12,000 he will be able to 
rent an estate of 2,500 acres for a term of six to 
nine years. He will, perhaps, work only a small 



THE LABOURER IN SICILY 141 

portion of this land himself and sublet the 
remainder. 

Part of it will go to a class of farmers that 
correspond to what are known in the South as 
"cash renters." These men will have some 
stock, and, perhaps, a little house and garden. In 
a good season they will be able to make enough 
to live upon and, perhaps, save a little money. 
If the small farmer is so unfortunate, however, 
as to have a bad season; if he loses some of his 
cattle or is compelled to borrow money or seed, 
the middleman who advances him is pretty 
certain to "clean him up," as our farmers say, 
at the end of the season. In that case, he falls 
into the larger and more unfortunate class 
beneath him, which corresponds to what we call 
in the Southern States the "share cropper." 
This man, corresponding to the share cropper, 
is supposed to work his portion of land on half- 
shares, but if, as frequently happens, he has 
been compelled to apply to the landlord during 
the season for a loan, it goes hard with him 
on the day of settlement. For example, this 
is the way, according to a description that I 
received, the crop is divided between the land- 
lord and his tenants: After the wheat has been 
cut and thrashed — thrashed not with a machine, 
nor yet perhaps with flails, but with oxen 
treading the sheaves on a dirt floor — the 



142 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

gobellotto subtracts from the returns of the 
harvest double, perhaps triple, measure of the 
seed he had advanced. After that, according 
to the local custom, he takes a certain portion 
for the cost of guarding the field while the grain 
is ripening, since no man's field is safe from 
thieves in Sicily. 

Then he takes another portion for the saints, 
something more for the use of the threshing floor 
and the storehouse and for anything else that 
occurs to him. Naturally he takes a certain 
portion for his other loans, if there have 
been any, and for interest. Then, finally, if 
there is nothing further to be subtracted, he 
divides the rest and gives the farmer his half. 

As a result the poor man who, as some one 
has said, "has watered the soil with his sweat," 
who has perhaps not slept more than two hours 
a night during the harvest time, and that, too, 
in the open field, is happy if he receives as much 
as a third or a quarter of the grain he has 
harvested. 

In the end the share cropper sinks, perhaps, 
still lower into the ranks of day labourer and 
becomes a wanderer over the earth, unless, 
before he reaches this point, he has not sold 
what little property he had and gone to America. 

I remember meeting one of these outcasts 
and wornout labourers, who had become a com- 



THE LABOURER IN SICILY 143 

mon beggar, tramping along the road toward 
Catania. He carried, swung across his back 
in a dirty cloth of some indescribable colour, 
a heavy pack. It contained, perhaps, some 
remnants of his earthly goods, and as he 
stopped to ask for a penny to help him on his 
way, I had a chance to look in his face and 
found that he was not the usual sort. He did 
not have the whine of the sturdy beggars I 
had been accustomed to meet, particularly in 
England. He was haggard and worn; hardship 
and hunger had humbled him, and there was a 
beaten look in his eyes, but suffering seemed to 
have lent a sort of nobility to the old man's 
face. 

I stopped and talked with him and managed 
to get from him some account of his life. He 
had been all his life a farm labourer; he could 
neither read nor write, but looked intelligent. 
He had never married and was without kith or 
kin. Three years before he had gotten into 
such a condition of health, he said, that they 
wouldn't let him work on the farm any more, 
and since that time he had been wandering 
about the country, begging, and living for the 
most part upon the charity of people who were 
almost as poor as he. 

I asked him where he was going. He said 
he had heard that in Catania an old man could 



144 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

get a chance to sweep the streets, and he was 
trying to reach there before nightfall. 

Several hours later, in returning from the 
country, I turned from the highway to visit 
the poorer districts of the city. As I turned 
into one of the streets which are lined with 
grimy little hovels made of blocks hewn from 
the great black stream of lava which Mt. ^Etna 
had poured over that part of the city three 
hundred and fifty years before, I saw the same 
old man lying in the gutter, with his head rest- 
ing on his bundle, where he had sunken down or 
fallen. 

I have described at some length the condition 
of the farm labourers in Italy because it seems 
to me that it is important that those who are 
inclined to be discouraged about the Negro 
in the South should know that his case is by 
no means as hopeless as that of some others. 
The Negro is not the man farthest down. The 
condition of the coloured farmer in the most 
backward parts of the Southern States in 
America, even where he has the least education 
and the least encouragement, is incomparably 
better than the condition and opportunities of 
the agricultural population in Sicily. 

The Negro farmer sometimes thinks he is 
badly treated in the South. Not infrequently 
he has to pay high rates of interest upon his 



THE LABOURER IN SICILY 145 

"advances" and sometimes, on account of his 
ignorance, he is not fairly treated in his yearly 
settlements. But there is this great difference 
between the Negro farmer in the South and the 
Italian farmer in Sicily: In Sicily a few capi- 
talists and descendants of the old feudal lords 
own practically all the soil and, under the crude 
and expensive system of agriculture which they 
employ, there is not enough land to employ the 
surplus population. The result is the farm 
labourers are competing for the privilege of 
working on the land. As agriculture goes down 
and the land produces less, the population in- 
creases and the rents go up. Thus between 
the upper and the nether millstone the farmer 
is crushed. 

In the South we have just the contrary sit- 
uation. We have land crying for the hand to 
till it; we have the landowners seeking labour 
and fairly begging for tenants to work their 
lands. 

If a Negro tenant does not like the way he 
is treated he can go to the neighbouring farm; 
he can go to the mines or to the public works, 
where his labour is in demand. But the only 
way the poor Italian can get free is by going to 
America, and that is why thousands sail from 
Palermo every year for this country. In cer- 
tain places in Sicily, in the three years includ- 



146 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

ing 1905 and 1907, more than four persons in 
every hundred of the population left Sicily for 
America. 

One thing that keeps the Sicilian down is 
the pride with which he remembers his past 
and the obstinacy with which he clings to his 
ancient customs and ways of doing things. It 
is said by certain persons, as an excuse for 
backward conditions of the country, that even 
if the landlords did attempt to introduce new 
machinery and modern methods of cultivation 
the people would rebel against any innovation. 
They are stuck so fast in their old traditional 
ways of doing things that they refuse to change. 

I have sometimes said that there was a cer- 
tain advantage in belonging to a new race that 
was not burdened with traditions and a past — 
to a race, in other words, that is looking for- 
ward instead of backward, and is more inter- 
ested in the future than in the past. The Negro 
farmer certainly has this advantage over the 
Italian peasant. 

If you ask a Sicilian workman why he does 
something in a certain way, he invariably re- 
plies: "We have always done that way," and 
that is enough for him. The Sicilian never 
forgets the past until he leaves Sicily, and fre- 
quently not even then. 

The result is that while the Negro in Africa 



THE LABOURER IN SICILY 147 

is learning, as I saw from a recent report of the 
German Government, to plow by steam, the 
Sicilian farmer, clinging proudly to his ancient 
customs and methods, is still using the same 
plow that was used by the Greeks in the days of 
Homer, and he is threshing his grain as people 
did in the time of Abraham. 



CHAPTER IX 

WOMEN AND THE WINE HARVEST IN SICILY 

IT WAS late in September when I reached 
Catania, on the eastern side of Sicily. The 
city lies at the foot of Mt. iEtna on the 
edge of the sea. Above it looms the vast bulk 
of the volcano, its slopes girdled with gardens 
and vineyards that mount, one terrace above 
the other, until they lose themselves in the 
clouds. A wide and fertile valley below the 
city to the south, through which the railway 
descends from the mountain to the sea, seemed, 
as did Mt. ^Etna itself, like one vast vineyard. 
This was the more noticeable and interesting 
because, at the time I reached there, the harvest 
was in progress; the vineyards were dotted with 
women carrying baskets; the wine presses were 
busy, and the air was filled with the fumes of 
the fermenting grape juice. 

Although it was Sunday morning and the 
bells in a hundred churches were calling the 
people to prayers, there was very little of the 
Sunday quiet I had somehow expected to meet. 
Most of the shops were open; in every part of 

148 



THE WINE HARVEST IN SICILY 149 

the city men were sitting in their doorways or 
on the pavement in front of their little cell- 
like houses, busily at work at their accustomed 
crafts. Outside the southern gate of the city 
a thrifty merchant had set up a hasty wine 
shop, in order to satisfy the thirst of the crowds 
of people who were passing in and out of the 
city and also, perhaps, to escape the tax which 
the city imposes upon all sorts of provisions that 
enter the city from the surrounding country. 
Country wine was selling here at a few pennies 
a litre — I have forgotten the exact sum — and 
crowds of people from the city celebrated, some- 
thing after the ancient custom of the country, 
I suppose, the annual harvest of the grapes. 

Out of the southern gate of the city, which 
leads into the fertile vine-clad plain, a dusty 
and perspiring procession — little two-wheeled 
carts, beautifully carved and decorated, carrying 
great casks of grape juice, little donkeys with 
a pigskin filled with wine on either flank and a 
driver trotting along beside them — pushed and 
crowded its way into the city. At the same 
time a steady stream of peasants on foot, or city 
people in carriages, mingling with the carts and 
pack-animals, poured out of the gate along the 
dusty highway, dividing and dwindling, until 
the stream lost itself among the cactus hedges 
that mark the winding country roads. 



i 5 o THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

It was to me a strange and interesting sight 
and, not only on this particular Sunday but 
afterward, almost every day I was in the city, 
in fact, I spent some time studying this pro- 
cession, noting the different figures and the 
different types of which it was made up. It 
was at this gate that I observed one day a 
peasant woman haggling with the customs 
officer over the tax she was to pay for the priv- 
ilege of bringing her produce to town. She 
was barefoot and travel-stained and had evi- 
dently come some distance, carrying her little 
stock of fruit and vegetables in a sack slung 
across her back. It seemed, however, that she 
had hidden, in the bottom of the sack, a few 
pounds of nuts, covering them over with fruit 
and vegetables. Something in her manner, I 
suppose, betrayed her, for the customs officer 
insisted on thrusting his hand down to the very 
bottom of the little sack and brought up tri- 
umphantly, at last, a little handful of the smug- 
gled nuts. I could not understand what the 
woman said, but I could not mistake the plead- 
ing expression with which she begged the officer 
to let her and her little produce through be- 
cause, as she indicated, showing him her empty 
palms, she did not have money enough to pay 
all that he demanded. 

I had heard and read a great deal about the 



THE WINE HARVEST IN SICILY 151 

hardships and cruelties of the tariff in America, 
but I confess that the best* argument for free 
trade that I ever met was that offered by the 
spectacle of this poor woman, with her little 
store of fruit and nuts, trying to get to market 
with her goods. 

Not far outside the city the highway runs 
close beside a cemetery. From the road one 
can see the elegant and imposing monuments 
that have been erected to mark the final resting 
places of the wealthy and distinguished families 
of the city. The road to this cemetery passes 
through a marble archway which is closed, as I 
remember, by massive iron gates. Standing by 
this gate, I noticed one day a young peasant 
woman silently weeping. She stood there for 
a long time, looking out across the fields as if 
she were waiting for some one who did not come, 
while the tears streamed down her face. She 
seemed so helpless and hopeless that I asked 
the guide who was with me to go across the 
street and find out what her trouble was. I 
thought there might perhaps be something that 
we could do for her. 

The guide, with the natural tact and polite- 
ness of his race, approached the woman and 
inquired the cause of her grief. She did not 
move or change expression, but, while the tears 
still streamed down her face, pointed to a pair 



iS2 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

of high-heeled slippers which she had taken off 
and placed beside her on the ground. 

"They hurt my feet," she said, and then 
smiled a little, for she, too, saw that there was a 
certain element of humour in the situation. I 
looked at her feet and then at her shoes and 
made up my mind that I could not help her. 

Farther on we passed some of the large es- 
tates which are owned generally by some of the 
wealthy landed proprietors in the city. The 
corresponding region outside of Palermo is oc- 
cupied by orange and lemon groves, but around 
Catania all the large estates, apparently, are 
given up to the culture of the vine. 

A large vineyard in the autumn or the time 
of the grape harvest presents one of the most 
interesting sights I have ever seen. The grapes, 
in thick, tempting clusters, hang so heavy on 
the low vines that it seems they must fall to 
the ground of their own weight. Meanwhile, 
troops of barefooted girls, with deep baskets, 
rapidly strip the vines of their fruit, piling the 
clusters in baskets. When all the baskets are 
full, they lift them to their heads or shoulders 
and, forming in line, march slowly in a sort of 
festal procession in the direction of the wine 
press. 

At the plantation which I visited the wine house 
was a large, rough building, set deep in the 



THE WINE HARVEST IN SICILY 153 

ground, so that one was compelled to descend 
a few steps to reach the ground floor. The 
building was divided so that one room con- 
tained the huge casks in which the wine was 
stored in order to get with age that delicate 
flavour that gives it its quality, while in the other 
the work of pressing the grapes was carried on. 

There was at one side of the room a press 
with a great twisted arm of a tree for a lever, 
but this was only used, I learned, for squeezing 
dry the refuse, from which a poorer and cheaper 
sort of wine was made. Directly in front as one 
entered the building, and high up under the 
roof, there was a huge, round, shallow tub-like 
vat. In this vat four or five men, with their 
trousers rolled up above their knees and their 
shoes and stockings on, were trotting about in 
a circle, and, singing as they went, tramping 
the grapes under their feet. 

Through an open space or door at the back 
I caught a glimpse now and then of the pro- 
cession of girls and men as they mounted the 
little stairs at the back of the wine house to 
pour fresh grapes into the press. In the light 
that came in through this opening the figures 
of the men trampling the grapes, their bare 
legs stained with wine, stood out clear and dis- 
tinct. At the same time the fumes which arose 
from the grapes filled the wine house so that the 



154 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

air, it almost seemed, was red with their odour. 
It is said that men who work all day in the wine 
press not infrequently become intoxicated from 
merely breathing the air saturated with this fer- 
menting grape juice. 

I imagine that the harvest season has always 
been, in every land and in every time, a period 
of rejoicing and gladness. I remember it was 
so among the slaves on the plantation when I 
was a boy. As I watched these men and lis- 
tened to the quaint and melancholy little songs 
they sang, while the red wine gushed out from 
under their trampling feet, I was reminded of 
the corn-huskings among the slaves, and of the 
songs the slaves sang at those times. 

I was reminded of it the more as I noticed 
the way in which the leader in the singing bowed 
his head and pressed his temples, just as I have 
seen it done before by the one who led the sing- 
ing at the corn-husking. I recall that, as a boy, 
the way this leader or chorister bowed his 
head and pressed his hands against his tem- 
ples made a deep impression. Perhaps he 
was merely trying in this way to remember the 
words, but it seemed as if he was listening to 
music that welled up inside of him, seeking in 
this way, not merely to recall the words, but 
catch the inspiration of the song. Sometimes, 
after he had seemed to listen this way for a few 



THE WINE HARVEST IN SICILY 155 

minutes, he would suddenly fling back his head 
and burst into a wilder and more thrilling 
strain. 

All this was strangely interesting and even 
thrilling to me, the more so, perhaps, because 
it seemed somehow as if I had seen or known 
all this somewhere before. Nevertheless, after 
watching these men, stained with wine and 
sweat, crushing the grapes under shoed and 
stockinged feet, I had even less desire to drink 
wine than ever before. It perhaps would not 
have been so bad if the men had not worn their 
socks. 

One thing that impressed me in all that I saw 
was the secondary and almost menial part the 
women took in the work. They worked directly 
under an overseer who directed all their move- 
ments — directed them, apparently, with a 
sharp switch which he carried in his hand. 
There was no laughter or singing and apparently 
little freedom among the women, who moved 
slowly, silently, with the weary and monotonous 
precision in their work I have frequently noted 
in gang labour. They had little if any share 
in the kind of pleasurable excitement which 
helped to lighten the work of the men. 

Once or twice every year, at the time of the 
grape and olive harvests, the girls and women 
come down from their mountain villages to 



156 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

share with the men in the work of the fields. 
For these two brief periods, as I understand it, 
the women of each one of these little country 
villages will be organized into a gang, just as is 
true of the gangs of wandering harvesters in 
Austria and Hungary. I had seen, on the Sun- 
day I arrived in Catania, crowds of these wo- 
men trooping, arm in arm, through the streets 
of the city. A party of them had, in fact, en- 
camped on the pavement in the little open 
square at the southern gate of the city. They 
were there nearly all day and, I suppose, all 
night, also. I was interested to observe the 
patience with which they sat for hours on the 
curb or steps, with their heads on their bundles, 
waiting until the negotiations for hiring them 
were finished. 

This brief period of the harvest time is almost 
the only opportunity that the majority of these 
country women have to get acquainted with 
the outside world. For the remainder of the 
year, it seems, they are rarely allowed to ven- 
ture beyond the limits of the street or village 
in which they live. 

In the course of my journey across the is- 
land I had seen, high up in the mountains, some 
of these inaccessible little nests from which, 
perhaps, these girls had come. In one or two 
cases, and especially at the time I visited the 



THE WINE HARVEST IN SICILY 157 

sulphur mines, I had an opportunity to see 
something of the life of these mountain villages. 
Now that I have come to speak especially of 
the women of the labouring and agricultural 
classes, I may as well tell here what I saw and 
learned of the way they live in their homes. 

Such a village as I have referred to consists, 
for the most part, of rows of low, one-story 
stone buildings, ranged along a street that is 
dirty beyond description. The wells are fre- 
quently built without mortar or plaster, and 
roofed sometimes with wood, but more fre- 
quently with tiles. In a corner there is a stone 
hearth upon which the cooking is done, when 
there is anything to cook. As there is no 
chimney, the smoke filters out through the 
roofing. 

I remember well a picture I saw in passing 
one such house. In front of the house a woman 
was standing holding in her arms a perfectly 
naked child. Another child, with nothing on 
but a shirt, was standing beside her holding her 
skirt. Through the open door I could see the 
whole of the single room in which this family 
lived. Back of the living-room and connected 
with it was a stall for the cattle. This was 
typical of many other homes that I saw. 

During the day the women, the children, the 
pigs, and the chickens spend most of their time in 



158 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

the dirty, crowded street. As a rule the men, 
unless they are engaged in some sort of handi- 
craft, are away in the fields at work. In many 
cases they do not come home once a month. 

In my journeys through these villages and 
the poor streets of the larger cities one question 
constantly arose in my mind for which I was 
never able to find an answer. It was this: 
What becomes of these people, together with 
their pigs, goats, chickens, and other animals, 
at night? How does the interior of these homes 
look after sundown? 

I have gone through some of the poorer 
streets of Catania at night, but invariably found 
them in almost total darkness. I could hear 
the people talking as they sat in their doorways, 
but I could not see them. In fact, I could not 
see anything but the dim outlines of the build- 
ings, because nowhere, apparently, were there 
any lights. 

A German author, Mr. S. Wermert, who has 
studied conditions closely in Sicily, and has 
written a great book on the social and economic 
conditions of the people, says, in regard to the 
way the people live in the little villages: 

"In the south, as is well known, people live for the most part 
out of doors. Every one sits in the street before the house door; 
there the craftsman works at his trade; there the mother of the 
family carries on her domestic labours. At evening, however, 






THE WINE HARVEST IN SICILY 159 

all crowd into the cave, parents and children, the mule or the 
donkey. The fattening pig, which, decorated with a collar, has 
been tied during the day in front of the house, where, with all 
the affection of a dog, it has glided about among the children, 
must also find a place in the house. The cock and hens betake 
themselves at sunset into this same space, in which the air is 
thick with smoke, because there is no chimney to the house. 
All breathe this air. One can imagine what a fearful atmosphere 
pervades the place. Every necessity of physical cleanliness 
and moral decency is lacking. In the corner there is frequently 
only one bunk, upon which the entire family sleeps, and for the 
most part it consists of nothing more than a heap of straw. In 
the fierce heat of the summer one naturally sleeps without a 
cover; in winter every one seeks to protect himself under the 
covers. Even when there are separate sleeping places all the 
most intimate secrets of family life become known to the chil- 
dren at an early age. Brothers and sisters almost always sleep 
in the same bed. Frequently a girl sleeps at the feet 
of her parents. The stupidity and coarseness of such a 
family existence is beyond description. There is naturally no 
such thing as a serious conception of morality among a people 
that for generations has grown up without education. For 
that reason, it frequently happens that the most unspeakable 
crimes are committed. It is, therefore, frequently difficult 
to determine with exactness the parentage of the children born 
into the family. The saying of the Romans, that 'paternity is 
always uncertain,' holds good here. In fact, it is quite possible 
that this legal conception owes its origin to observations in 
regard to the condition of the rural population of that period* 
It is, however, probable that in the country districts of Sicily 
conditions have changed very little since Roman times." 

From all that I can learn, the filthy promis- 
cuity of these crowded houses and dirty streets 
have made the Sicilian rural villages breeding 
places of vices and crimes of a kind of which 



i6o THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

the rural Negro population in the United States, 
for example, probably never heard. There are 
some things, in connection with this ancient 
civilization, concerning which it is better the 
Negro should not know, because the knowledge 
of them means moral and physical degeneration, 
and at the present time, whatever else may be 
said about the condition of the Negro, he is not, 
in the rural districts at least, a degenerate. 
Even in those parts of the Southern States 
where he has been least touched by civilization, 
the Negro seems to me to be incomparably 
better off in his family life than is true of the 
agricultural classes in Sicily. 

The Negro is better off in his family, in the 
first place, because, even when his home is little 
more than a primitive one-room cabin, he is at 
least living in the open country in contact with 
the pure air and freedom of the woods, and 
not in the crowded village where the air and 
the soil have for centuries been polluted with 
the accumulated refuse and offscourings of a 
crowded and slatternly population. 

In the matter of his religious life, in spite of 
all that has been said in the past about the 
ignorance and even immorality of certain of the 
rural Negro preachers, I am convinced, from 
what I learned while I was in Sicily, that the 
Negro has a purer type of religion and a better 



THE WINE HARVEST IN SICILY 161 

and more earnest class of ministers than is true 
of the masses of these Sicilian people, particu- 
larly in the country districts. 

In this connection, it should not be forgotten 
also that the Negro is what he is because he has 
never had a chance to learn anything better. 
He is going forward. The people of Sicily, 
who have been Christians almost since the 
time that the Apostle Paul landed in Syracuse, 
have, on the other hand, gone backward. All 
kinds of barbarous superstitions have grown up 
in connection with their religious life and have 
crowded out, to a large extent, the better ele- 
ments. 

While the condition of Negro education in 
the Southern States is by no means perfect, 
the Negro, and particularly the Negro woman, 
has some advantages which are so far beyond 
the reach of the peasant girl in Sicily that she 
has never dreamed of possessing them. For 
example, every Negro girl in America has the 
same opportunities for education that are given 
to Negro boys. She may enter the industrial 
school, or she may, if she choose, as she fre- 
quently does, go to college. All the trades 
and the professions are open to her. One of the 
first Negro doctors in Alabama was a woman. 
Every year there are hundreds and, perhaps, 
thousands of Negro girls who go up from the 



162 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

farming districts of the Southern States to 
attend these higher schools, where they have an 
opportunity to come under the influence of 
some of the best and most cultivated white 
people in the United States. In the country 
villages, I venture to say, not one girl in a 
hundred ever learns so much as to read and 
write. 

I was much impressed, as I went about in 
Sicily, with the substantial character of the 
buildings and improvements, such as they were. 
Everything is of stone. Even the most mis- 
erable house is built as if it were expected to 
last for centuries, and an incredible amount of 
labour has been spent everywhere throughout 
the country in erecting stone walls. 

One reason for this is that there is almost no 
wood to be had for building. Everything is 
necessarily built of stone and tiles. Another 
reason, I suspect, why Sicilian people build 
permanently is because they never expect any 
change in their condition. If one asks them 
why they have built their villages on the most 
inconvenient and inaccessible places, they do 
not know. They know only that these towns 
have always been there and they haven't the 
least idea but what they will remain always 
where they are. As a matter of fact, in order 
to find an explanation for the location of these 



THE WINE HARVEST IN SICILY 163 

towns, students, I learned, have had to go back 
several centuries before Christ to the time when 
the Greeks and the Phoenicians were contending 
for the possession of the island. At that time 
the original population took refuge in these 
mountain fastnesses, and through all the changes 
since, these towns, with, perhaps, some remnants 
of the race that originally inhabited the island, 
have remained. 

Everywhere in Sicily one is confronted with 
the fact that he is among a people that is living 
among the ruins and remains of an ancient 
civilization. For example, in seeking to under- 
stand the difference in the position of women 
in Sicily from that of other parts of Europe I 
learned that one had to go back to the Greeks 
and the Saracens, among whom women held 
a much lower position and were much less free 
than among the peoples of Europe. Not only 
that, but I met persons who professed to be able 
to distinguish among the women Greek and 
Saracen types. I remember having my atten- 
tion called at one time to a group of women, 
wearing very black shawls over their heads, who 
seemed more shrinking and less free in their 
actions than other women I had seen in Sicily. 
I was informed that these women were of the 
Saracen type and that the habit of wearing 
these dark shawls over their heads and holding 



164 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

them tight under their chins was a custom that 
had come from the Arabs. The shawls, I sup- 
pose, took the place in a sort of way of the veils 
worn by Oriental women. 

Now all these ancient customs and habits, 
and all the quaint superstitions with which 
life among the ignorant classes is overgrown, 
have, I suppose, the same kind of interest and 
fascination as some of the ancient buildings. 
But very few people realize, I am convinced, to 
what degree these ancient customs weigh upon 
the people, especially the women, and hinder 
their progress. 

In the midst of these conditions the Sicilian 
women, who are looked upon by the men 
as inferior creatures and guarded by them 
as a species of property, live like prisoners 
in their own villages. Bound fast, on the 
one hand, by age-long customs, and on the 
other surrounded by a wall of ignorance 
which shuts out from them all knowledge of 
the outer world, they live in a sort of mental 
and moral slavery under the control of their 
husbands and of the ignorant, and possibly 
vicious, village priests. 

For this reason, the journey to America is 
for the woman of Sicily a real emancipation. 
In fact, I do not know of any more important 
work that is going on for the emancipation of 



THE WINE HARVEST IN SICILY 165 

women anywhere than that which is being done, 
directly and indirectly, through the emigration 
from Sicily and Italy to the United States, in 
bringing liberty of thought to the women of 
Southern Italy. 



CHAPTER X 

THE CHURCH, THE PEOPLE, AND THE MAFIA 

ONE of the interesting sights of Catania, 
Sicily, as of nearly every other city I 
visited in Europe, is the market-place. 
I confess that I have a fondness for visiting 
markets. I like to wander through the stalls, 
with their quantities of fruit, vegetables, meat 
and bread, all the common, wholesome and 
necessary things of life, piled and ranged in 
bountiful profusion. 

I like to watch the crowds of people com- 
ing and going, buying and selling, dickering 
and chaffering. A market, particularly an old- 
fashioned market, such as one may see almost 
anywhere in Europe, in which the people from 
the town and the people from the country, pro- 
ducer and consumer, meet and bargain with 
each other, seems a much more wholesome and 
human place than, for example, a factory. 
Besides that, any one who goes abroad to see 
people rather than to see things will, I 
believe, find the markets of Europe more in- 
teresting and more instructive than the museums. 

166 



THE CHURCH, AND THE MAFIA 167 

During my journey across Europe I visited 
the markets in nearly every large city in which 
I stopped. I saw something of the curious 
Sunday markets of Bethnal Green and White- 
chapel, London, with their long lines of shouting 
hucksters and their crowds of hungry shoppers, 
and the Jewish market in the Ghetto of Cracow, 
Poland, where pale-faced rabbis were slaughter- 
ing, according to the strict ritual of the Jewish 
law, droves of squawking geese. Among others, 
I visited the Monday market in Catania, which 
differs from the markets I had seen elsewhere 
in the multitudes of articles of household manu- 
facture offered for sale, and in the general holi- 
day character of the proceedings. 

It was like a country fair in one of our South- 
ern cities, only cruder and quainter. For exam- 
ple, instead of the familiar shooting gallery, with 
painted targets, one enterprising man had set 
up a dozen painted sticks on a rough box, and 
offered to the public, for something less than a 
cent, the opportunity to shoot at them with an 
ancient cross-bow, such as I did not imagine 
existed outside of museums. Then there were 
all sorts of curious and primitive games of 
chance. Among other devices for entertaining 
and mystifying the people I noticed a young 
woman seated in a chair, blindfolded. A crowd 
surrounded her while she named various objects 



i68 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

belonging to the crowd, which her companion, a 
man, held in his hands. At the same time she 
told the colour of the hair and eyes, and reeled 
off a prophecy in regard to the future of the dif- 
ferent persons to whom the article belonged. 

More interesting still were the public story- 
tellers, who seemed to take the place, to a 
certain extent, of the daily newspaper among the 
masses of the people, so many of whom can 
neither read nor write. 

The story-tellers stood upon little platforms, 
which they carried about [with them like port- 
able pulpits, in order that they might be plainly 
visible to the crowd. Each carried a large banner 
on which were painted a series of pictures repre- 
senting the scenes in the stories which they told. 

These stories, together with the pictures which 
illustrated them, had apparently been composed 
by the men who told them, for they all touched 
upon contemporary events. In fact, most of 
them referred in some way to America. Like 
those songbirds that have only one constantly 
repeated note, each story-teller had but one 
story, which he told over and over again, in 
the same tones, with the same attitudes, and 
same little dramatic surprises. 

Although I was not able to understand what 
was said, it was not difficult to follow the 
narrative from the pictures. One story told 






THE CHURCH, AND THE MAFIA 169 

the fortunes of a young girl who had been 
lured away to America. Perhaps she was one 
of those "white slaves" to which I noticed a 
good many references in Italy, and in other of 
the emigrant countries. At any rate, she was 
imprisoned in a very dark and dismal place in 
some part of New York which I was not able to 
locate from the picture. Then her brother, 
or perhaps it was her lover, whom she had left 
behind in Sicily, saw a vision. It was a vision 
of St. George and the dragon, and after seeing 
this vision he rose up and went to America and 
rescued her. The touching thing about it all, 
the thing that showed how realistic this whole 
tale was to the crowd that stood and listened 
to it in rapt attention, was that when the story 
reached the point where the picture of St. 
George and the dragon is referred to, the men 
simultaneously raised their hats. At the same 
time the speaker assumed a more solemn tone, 
and the crowd listened with a reverential awe 
while he went on to relate the miracle by which 
the young woman had been saved. 

The sight of this crowd of people, standing 
bareheaded in an open square, listening rever- 
entially to the story of a street fakir, struck me, 
like so much else that I saw of the life of the 
common people in Catania and elsewhere in 
Sicily, as strangely touching and pathetic. It 



170 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

reminded me of all that I had read and heard 
of the superstitions of the common people of 
the country and gave me as insight, such as I 
had not had before, into the way in which the 
masses of the people feel toward the Catholic 
Church, with all its religious ceremonies and 
symbols. It led me to suspect, also, that much 
in the religious life of the Sicilian people which 
looks, perhaps, to those who have had a dif- 
ferent training, like superstition, is in fact 
merely the natural expression of the reverence 
and piety of a simple-minded and, perhaps, an 
ignorant people. 

I was told, while I was in that city, that 
Catania has two hundred and fifty churches, 
and though I do not know that this statement is 
correct, I could easily believe it from the inter- 
minable clanging church bells that smote upon 
my ears the first Sunday morning I was in the 
city. At any rate, no one can go through the 
city and look at the public buildings, or study 
the people in their homes, without meeting 
abundant evidence of the all-pervading in- 
fluence of the Church. Everywhere, built into 
the buildings, on the street corners, and in every 
possible public place, one sees little images of 
the Virgin, with perhaps a burning lamp before 
them. Once I ran across one such image, with 
a lamp before it, planted in a field. I was told 



THE CHURCH, AND THE MAFIA 171 

it was there to protect the crops from the influ- 
ence of evil spirits. 

It did not seem to have occurred to any one 
that the image of the Virgin and the blessing of 
the Church, which were intended to protect 
the fields from evil spirits, might protect them 
also from thieves, or banish from the community 
the evil spirits that inspired men to rob and 
steal. If this opinion had been very widely 
held among the masses of the people it would 
hardly have been necessary to guard the fields 
night and day during the harvest season, by 
men armed with shotguns. 

This brings me to another point in which I 
should like to compare the masses of the Sicilian 
people with the masses of the Negroes in the 
Southern States — namely, in respect to their 
religious life. 

Naturally, the first thing that strikes one, in 
attempting to make such a comparison, is the 
wide difference in the situation of the average 
black man in the Southern States and the 
corresponding class in Sicily. In all the exter- 
nals of religious life, at least, the Sicilian is far 
ahead of the Negro. 

Sicily was one of the first countries in the 
world in which Christianity was planted. St. 
Paul stopped three days in Syracuse on his way 
to Rome, and there is still standing a building 



172 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

in Catania in which St. Peter is said to have 
preached. 

Sicily has inherited the traditions, the or- 
ganization and the splendid churches and build- 
ings which have grown up and accumulated 
through a thousand years and more. The 
black man, on the contrary, gained his first 
knowledge of Christianity in slavery and in a 
very imperfect and unsatisfactory form. It 
is only since freedom came that the Negro 
church has had an opportunity to extend and 
establish its influence among the masses of the 
people, while out of their poverty Negroes, who 
are even yet struggling to build and own their 
own homes, and so establish family life, have 
had to build churches and training schools for 
their ministers, to establish a religious press, 
to support missionary societies and all the other 
aids and accessories of organized religion. 

In view of the wide difference between the 
people of Sicily and the Negroes in America, 
so far as concerns the external side of their 
religious life, it struck me as curious that I 
should hear almost exactly the same criticism 
of the people in Sicily, in respect to their re- 
ligion, that I have frequently heard of the 
Negroes in America. A very large number of 
the popular superstitions of Sicily, what we 
sometimes call the folklore of a country, are 



THE CHURCH, AND THE MAFIA 173 

very much like many of the notions that the 
Negroes are supposed to have imported to 
America from Africa. Any one who has lis- 
tened to any of the older generation of coloured 
people tell of the various ways of "working the 
roots," as they call it, will learn a great many 
things that can be almost exactly duplicated 
in the popular notions about drugs and philters 
among the people of Sicily. 

It is said of the Sicilians, among other things, 
that their Christianity is saturated with pagan 
superstitions and that, for the average Sicilian, 
religion has no connection with moral life. 

In many cases it seems as if the image of the 
Virgin has become, among the lower class of 
people, little more than a fetish, a thing to 
conjure with. For example, the peasant who, 
in order to revenge himself upon his landlord, 
and perhaps to compensate himself for what he 
believes has been taken from him by fraud or 
extortion, determines to rob his landlord's field 
or flock, will pray before one of these images, 
before starting out, for success. If he is really 
"pious" he may offer to the saints, in case he 
is successful, a portion of what he has stolen. 
If, however, he fails and is merely superstitious, 
he will sometimes curse and revile, or even spit 
upon, the image to which he previously prayed. 

I have heard that the savages in Africa will 



174 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

sometimes behave in the same way toward the 
object of which they have made a fetish, but 
I have never heard of anything like that among 
my own people in the South. The Negro is 
frequently superstitious, as most other ignorant 
people are, but he is not cynical, and never 
scoffs at anything which has a religious signifi- 
cance. 

One thing that indicates the large part that 
religion plays in the lives of the Sicilian peo- 
ple is the fact that out of the 365 days in the 
year 104 are sacred to the Church. The large 
amounts of money expended annually by the 
different cities of Sicily upon processions and 
celebrations in honour of the local saints is one 
of the sources of complaint made by those who 
are urging reforms in the local administrations. 
They say that the money expended in this way 
might better be used in improving the sanitary 
condition of the cities. 

As indicating how little all this religious 
activity connects itself with practical and moral 
life it is stated that, while Sicily supports ten 
times as many churches and clergy in proportion 
to its population as is true of Germany, for 
instance, statistics show that it suffers from 
eleven times as many murders and crimes of 
violence. In quoting these statements I do 
not intend to suggest a comparison between the 



THE CHURCH, AND THE MAFIA 175 

form of religion that prevails in Germany with 
that in Sicily. Religion, like everything else 
in Sicily, is deeply rooted in the past. It has 
shared all the changing history of that island, 
and naturally reflects the conditions, sentiments, 
and prejudices of the people. 

If the Catholic Church is in any way to blame 
for the existing conditions in Sicily it seems to 
me it is in the fact that during the long period 
of years in which the education of the people 
has been almost wholly in its hands, the Church 
has held fast to the old medieval notion that 
education was only for the few, and for 
that reason has done little or nothing to 
raise the standard of intelligence among the 
masses. 

It has been a great mistake on the part of 
the Church, it seems to me, to permit it to be 
said that the Socialists, many of whom are not 
merely indifferent but openly opposed to the 
Church, represent the only party that has sin- 
cerely desired and striven for the enlightenment 
and general welfare of the people at the bottom. 
Such a statement could not, of course, be so 
easily made of the Church in its relations to 
the masses of the people elsewhere in Italy. 

The fact about the Sicilian seems to be, 
however, not that he is, as is sometimes said of 
the Negro, unmoral, but that the moral code by 



176 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

which he governs himself sometimes makes him 
a menace to public order. 

One of the first things that impressed me, 
while I was in Sicily, was the enormous and 
expensive precautions that were necessary to 
guard the fields from thieves. Hundreds of 
miles of high stone walls have been erected in 
different parts of the island to protect property 
from vandalism and thieves. In the harvest 
time it is necessary to practically garrison the 
island w T ith armed guards to preserve the crops. 
The cost of putting a private policeman in every 
field and garden is very heavy, and this expense, 
which is imposed upon the land, falls in the long 
run upon the labourer. 

The reason for this condition rests in the 
conviction, which every farm labourer shares, 
that for his long and crushing labour on the land 
he does not receive a sufficient wage. In many 
cases it is likely enough that he is driven by 
hunger to steal. Under such circumstances 
it is not difficult to understand that stealing 
soon ceases to be looked upon as a crime, and 
seems to be regarded as a kind of enterprise 
which is only wrong when it is unsuccessful. 
But there is something further, I learned, in 
the back of the head of almost every Sicilian 
which explains many things in the Sicilian 
character and customs that strike strangers as 



THE CHURCH, AND THE MAFIA 177 

peculiar. I refer to what goes in Sicily under 
the name of the omerta, and is, like some of the 
customs that exist in the Southern States, part 
of the unwritten law of the country. The 
principle of this unwritten law is silence. If 
any one is robbed, wounded, or injured in any 
way he remains silent. If the police seek to 
find out who is his enemy he will answer, "I 
do not know." 

In some provinces in Sicily it is said to be 
almost impossible to arrest and convict crim- 
inals, because no one will hesitate to go into 
court and perjure himself for a friend. It is 
considered a point of honour to do so. On the 
other hand, to assist the police in any way in the 
prosecution of crime is looked upon as a disgrace. 
The ordinary man may be a thief, a robber, or a 
murderer and be forgiven, but there is no com- 
fort in heaven or earth for the man who betrays 
a neighbour or a friend. 

Complaint is sometimes made that the col- 
oured people in the Southern States will protect 
and conceal those among their number who are 
accused of crime. In most cases where that 
happens I believe it will be found that the real 
reason is not the desire to save any one of their 
number from a just and deserved punishment, 
but rather the feeling of uncertainty, because 
of what they have heard and seen of lynchings 



178 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

in different parts of the country, as to whether 
the accused will have the benefit of a full and 
fair investigation in a court of law. 

There is among the Negro population of the 
United States, even though the administration 
of the law is almost entirely in the hands of 
another race, no settled distrust of the Govern- 
ment and the courts and no disposition, as is 
true of the Sicilian, to resort to private justice 
and revenge. In spite of the fact that he fre- 
quently gets into trouble with the police and the 
courts the Negro is, by disposition at least, 
the most law-abiding man in the community. 
I mean by this, the Negro is never an anarchist, 
he is not opposed to law as such, but submits to 
it when he has committed a crime. 

This brings me to another feature of Sicilian 
life — namely, the Mafia. 

I had heard a great deal about the Mafia in 
Italy, and about the criminal political organi- 
zations in other parts of Italy, before I came to 
Europe-, and was anxious, if possible, to learn 
something that would give me an insight into 
the local causes and conditions which had pro- 
duced them. 

One of the professional story-tellers whom I 
encountered while I was wandering about in 
the market in Catania recalled the subject to 
my mind. He was retailing to a crowd in the 



THE CHURCH, AND THE MAFIA 179 

market square a story that was even more ex- 
citing and interesting to me, at least, than the 
one which I have already mentioned. It was, 
in fact, nothing less than an account of the 
murders and outrages of the Black Hand in 
New York City. 

At first it struck me as very curious that I 
should meet in Italy, the home of the Mafia 
and the Camorra, a crowd of people in the public 
square listening with apparent wonder and awe 
to an account of the fabulous crimes and mis- 
deeds of their fellow countrymen in another 
part of the world. I had a sort of notion that 
the Black Hand operations would be so familiar 
to Sicilians that they would have no curiosity 
about them. It was not so, however, and after 
I learned that New York had an Italian popu- 
lation larger than Rome, larger, in fact, than any 
Italian city, with the exception of Naples, this 
did not seem so strange. There are, as a mat- 
ter of fact, more than 500,000 Italians in New 
York City, and 85 per cent, of them are from 
southern Italy. Among this 85 per cent, are 
very many who belong to the criminal classes. 
The result is that the Mafia, under the name of 
the Black Hand, is probably as active and, per- 
haps, as powerful among the Italian population 
in New York to-day as it ever was in Italy. 

While I was in Palermo I had the place pointed 



180 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

out to me where Petrosino, the Italian detective 
from New York, who went to Sicily to secure 
the records of some of the noted Italian criminals 
then living in America, was shot and killed. 
Petrosino was killed March 12, 1909. The kill- 
ing of this American officer in the streets of 
Palermo served to call attention to the number 
of Black Hand crimes committed by Italians in 
this country. During the next nine months 
after Petrosino's death it was reported that no 
less than fifty "Italian killings," as they were 
called, took place either in New York City 
itself or in the surrounding territory, and from 
1906 to 1909, according to statistics prepared 
by the New York World, of the 112 unexplained 
murders committed in and around New York, 
54 were those of Italians. This suggests, at 
least, the manner in which our own country is 
affected by the conditions of the masses in 
southern Italy and Sicily. 

The Mafia, the Black Hand, as it is called in 
America, is a kind of institution which is so 
peculiar and to such an extent the product of 
purely local conditions that it seems difficult 
even for those who know most about it to ex- 
plain its existence. One statement which I 
heard in regard to the matter was especially 
interesting to me. It was said that the con- 
dition of mind which made the Mafia possible, 



THE CHURCH, AND THE MAFIA 181 

the fear and distrust which divide the masses 
of the people from the ruling classes and the 
Government, was the result of the mingling 
of the races in the island; that the Mafia was, 
in short, Sicily's race problem. 

It is certainly true that in no other part of 
Europe, with the possible exception of Spain, 
have the different peoples of Europe and Africa 
become so intermingled as they have in this 
island, which is one of the natural bridges 
between Europe and Africa. In addition to 
the Arabs and Saracens from Africa, nearly all 
the races of Europe, Germans, Latins, Greeks, 
have all at different times lived and ruled on 
the island. Near Palermo, for example, there 
are still the remnants of a colony of Albanians, 
a Slavic people who speak modern Greek, and 
worship after the fashion of the Eastern Church, 
and there are fragments and remnants of many 
other races still preserved in different parts of 
the island. 

My own experience has taught me, how- 
ever, to distrust what I may call "racial ex- 
planations. " They are convenient and easy to 
make, but too sweeping, and, practically, the 
effect of them is to discourage any effort to 
improve. For example, if some one discovers 
that the condition in which a people happens 
to be found at any given time is due to race, 



182 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

that it is constitutional, and in the blood, so to 
speak, then, of course, there is nothing to do. 
If, however, it is due to environment, education 
may help. The discussion and emphasis on the 
fact of race have been made the excuse, in the 
Southern States, for a good deal of apathy and 
indifference in regard to the hopes and progress 
of the Negro. In fact, whenever I hear a poli- 
tician in the South ask the rhetorical question, 
"Can the leopard change his spots?" I usually 
find that he is opposing the establishment of a 
Negro school or is discouraging some other 
effort to improve the condition of the Negro 
people. 

The real trouble with explanations of this 
kind is that as soon as a man has made up his 
mind, for example, that a people, or class of 
people, belongs to a so-called "inferior race," 
he is not inclined to support any kind of ex- 
periment, like the building of a school, that 
may prove that his explanation was mistaken. 

The real reason for the backward condition 
of Sicily is, in my opinion, not so much the inter- 
mixture of races as the neglect and oppression of 
the masses of the people. In 1861, when Sicily 
became a part of the Italian Confederation, 
90 per cent, of the population were wholly un- 
able to read or write. This means that at this 
time the people of Sicily were not much better 



THE CHURCH, AND THE MAFIA 183 

off, as far as education is concerned, than the 
Negro slaves at the time of emancipation. It 
has been estimated that between 5 and 10 per 
cent, of the slaves could read and write. 

One of the first things the Italian Govern- 
ment attempted to do, after annexation, was 
to reorganize the school system of Sicily. But 
even under the new Government, and with a 
compulsory education law on the statute books, 
progress has been slow. In 1881, twenty years 
later, more than 84 per cent, of the population 
could neither read nor write, and as late as 1901, 
for every hundred inhabitants of school age, 
more than seventy were illiterate. 

In practically the same period — that is, 
from 1866 to 1900 — the Negro population in 
the United States reduced its illiteracy to 
44.5 per cent, of the population of school age, 
and for every one hundred Negroes in the 
Southern States, fifty-two could read and write. 

Sicily has three universities, one in each of 
its three largest cities, Palermo, Catania, and 
Messina, but they are for the few, and have in 
no way connected themselves with the practi- 
cal interests and the daily life of the people. 
One result of the ignorance of the people is that 
in Sicily, where the educational qualifications 
exclude more persons than elsewhere from the 
suffrage, not more than 3.62 persons in every 



i8 4 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

hundred of the population vote. This is ac- 
cording to statistics, which go back, however, 
to 1895. 

As near as I can make out, the Mafia seems to 
have grown up, in the first place, like the White 
Caps, the Night Riders, and the lynchers in our 
own country, as a means of private vengeance. 
The people, perhaps because they despised and 
hated the Government, preferred to settle their 
scores in the old barbaric fashion of private 
warfare. The consequence was that the small 
towns were divided by tribal and family feuds. 
Under such circumstances professional outlaws 
became of service either for the purposes of 
attack or defence. From conditions something 
like this what is known as the Mafia sprang. 

It is said that it was the rich fruit gardens of 
the "Shell of Gold" outside of Palermo which 
gave the Mafia its first secure foothold and 
eventually made that city the centre of its 
activity. In that region field guards were nec- 
essary, in addition to the high walls, to keep 
thieves out of the plantations where the golden 
fruit ripened almost all the year round. In 
the course of time these field guards became 
associated in a sort of clan or guild. In these 
guilds the most enterprising of the guards event- 
ually became the leaders, and ruled those under 
them like the tribal chiefs. 



THE CHURCH, AND THE MAFIA 185 

Once established, these bands soon dominated 
the situation. No property owner dared in- 
stall a guard without the consent of the chief. 
If he did, he was likely to have his trees de- 
stroyed or his whole crop stolen. A guard who 
was not a member of the band was likely to be 
brought down some night with a shot from a 
hedge. On the other hand, the mere knowl- 
edge that a certain plantation was under 
the protection of the Mafia was in itself 
almost sufficient to insure it from attack, 
and this because the Mafia, through all its 
devious connections with the lower and 
criminal classes, was much better able to 
ferret out and punish the criminals than the 
police. 

By making himself at the same time useful 
and feared in the community, the chief of the 
Mafia soon began to get his hand in almost 
everything that was going on. He found him- 
self called on to settle disputes. He mixed in 
politics and was secretly in the employ of rich 
and powerful men. In this way the Mafia, 
which was at bottom largely a criminal organi- 
zation, gained in time standing and recogni- 
tion in the community, in some respects, not 
unlike, I imagine, that of Tammany Hall in 
New York. When the Mafia, under the name 
of the Black Hand, reached New York, however, 



186 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

it seems to have become a criminal organization, 
pure and simple. 

Those who have studied the history of this 
peculiar organization much farther than I have 
been able to do say that in their opinion the 
Mafia, or Black Hand, will not long survive in 
America because there is in this country no 
such oppression of the poor by the rich and no 
such hatred and suspicion of the high by the 
low as is the case in Sicily, to give it general 
support. In other words, the Mafia is depend- 
ent on class hatred and class oppression for its 
existence. 

Perhaps I can give some idea of what it is 
that embitters the poor man in Sicily, who is 
without property, education, or opportunity, 
against the large property owners, the rich, 
educated, and ruling class. 

It is estimated by the Socialists that in Italy 
the labouring man pays 54 per cent, of the 
taxes; business men and the professional classes 
pay 34 per cent., while the class which lives 
upon rents and the income from investments of 
various kinds furnishes but 12 per cent, of the 
revenues of the state. 

Italy has, I think, every kind and method of 
taxation which has ever been invented. There 
is an income tax, which varies between 7J and 20 
per cent., though small incomes of less than one 



THE CHURCH, AND THE MAFIA 187 

hundred dollars a year are exempt. The tax 
on landed property amounts to 30, 40, or even 50 
per cent. In addition to these there is the 
lottery, the state monopolies, the stamp tax 
and dog tax. Finally the municipal taxes on 
all kinds of foodstuffs which are brought into 
the town. This tax absorbs from 20 to 30 per 
cent, of the labouring man's income. 

All these taxes, direct and indirect, are so 
arranged that the heaviest burden falls upon that 
portion of the community which is least able to 
bear it. For example, salt is a Government 
monopoly in Italy, and in 1901 the people of 
Italy paid #15,000 for salt which cost the Gov- 
ernment #1,200 to manufacture. The Italian 
Government ships salt to America for the use of 
the Gloucester fishermen for 50 cents a barrel of 
280 pounds, or five and three-fifth pounds for a 
cent. This same salt costs the Italian, because 
of the monopoly of the Government, 4 cents a 
pound — that is to say, twelve times what it 
costs in America. In order to protect this 
monopoly the Government even goes so far as 
to station guards along the whole seacoast to 
prevent people from "stealing" sea water in 
buckets, to obtain salt. 

Fortunately the state monopoly of salt does 
not extend to Sicily, but the principle of taxing 
the people according to their necessities, rather 



188 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

than according to their ability to pay, is the 
same there as elsewhere in Italy. As an illus- 
tration of the unfair way in which the taxes are 
levied in some parts of the country it is said that 
the donkey of the poor farmer is compelled to 
pay a tax, while the saddle-horse of the rich land- 
lord goes free. 

In comparison with this, the Negro in the 
South hardly knows what taxes are. The 
Negro farmer, for example, has an inexhaustible 
market for his cotton, corn, pork, and vegeta- 
bles, and all the other farm vegetables that he 
can raise. Land is so cheap that a thrifty far- 
mer can buy and pay for a farm within five or 
six years. Taxes on farm land are so low that 
the farmer hardly considers them in his yearly 
budget. 

Poor as some of the Negro schools are in 
some parts of the South, they are vastly better 
and more numerous than those of the country 
people in Sicily. More than that, the Govern- 
ment puts no tax either on rain or sunshine, 
and the Negro in the Southern States has plenty 
of both, which is not true of the Sicilian farmer, 
who has too much sunshine and not enough rain. 
So much is the farmer in Sicily in need of water 
that at certain times in the year it is said that 
wine is cheaper than water. Finally, the Negro 
farmer, if he desires to take a load of produce 



THE CHURCH, AND THE MAFIA 189 

to the town, does not, as is the case of the Sicilian, 
meet a policeman on the outskirts of the city 
who takes one fifth of his cotton, corn, eggs, or 
whatever he happens to have, away from him, 
before he will allow him to enter the town. 

One day, while I was walking along the edge 
of the harbour in Catania, I noticed a man who 
was at work mending a high wire netting, about 
twenty or thirty feet high, which extended along 
the edge of the water. I saw that it extended 
as far as I could see. Upon inquiry I learned 
that it was placed there to prevent the fishermen, 
whom I noticed constantly coming and going 
with their little sailing boats, from bringing 
their fish into the city without paying the tax. 

At the custom house, where the fishermen 
land, I observed one of these fishermen, who had 
landed with a small quantity of fish, which he 
was carrying to the market nearby, stop and 
fumble in his clothes, trying to find money 
enough to pay the tariff. When he could not 
find sufficient money to pay the sum demanded, 
he left two small fishes behind with the collector 
to cover the amount of the tax. 

Fish is the cheapest and most abundant food 
the poor in the city can get to eat. The sea, 
just beyond their doors, is swarming with this 
kind of food. Nevertheless the city main- 
tains an expensive army of officials to collect 



i 9 o THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

this miserable little tax upon the necessities of 
the poor. 

The yearly income of a labourer's family in 
Catania is about 750 lire, or $170 a year. Of 
this amount it has been reckoned that in the 
way of taxes upon foodstuffs brought into the 
city the labourer pays 150 lire, or one fifth of 
his whole income. 

In spite of all that has been proposed and 
attempted to improve conditions in Sicily since 
that island became a part of the Italian Confed- 
eration, the Government has failed, so far as I can 
learn, to gain the confidence, respect, and coop- 
eration of the masses of the people. Naturally, 
conditions which have grown up in the course of 
hundreds of years and have become fixed in the 
minds and habits of all classes of the people 
cannot be changed suddenly. The farther I 
have looked into the situation in Sicily the more 
I am convinced that, different as it is in details, 
the problem of Sicily is fundamentally the same 
as that which we have here to face in the 
Southern States since the war. It is, in short, 
a problem of education, and by that I mean 
education which seeks to touch, to lift and in- 
spire the man at the bottom, and fit him for 
practical daily life. 

In this opinion I find that I am in agreement 
with the members of the commission which was 



THE CHURCH, AND THE MAFIA 191 

appointed by the Italian Government in 1896 
to investigate the condition of the peasants 
in southern Italy, particularly in their relation 
to the landed proprietors. The report of the 
commission, which has been recently made, 
fills several large volumes, but the substance of 
it seems to be, as far as I can learn, that the 
root of the evil is in the ignorance of the rural 
population. One of the effects of Italian immi- 
gration to America will probably be the estab- 
lishment of a popular school system for the 
people on the land. 



CHAPTER XI 

CHILD LABOUR AND THE SULPHUR MINES 

THERE is one street in Catania, Sicily, 
which seems to be given over to the 
trade and industry of the poorer people 
of the city. It is not mentioned in the guide- 
books, and there is perhaps no reason why it 
should be. Nevertheless, there are a great 
many interesting things to be seen in that street 
— strange, quaint, homely things — that give a 
stranger intimate glimpses into the life of the 
people. 

For example, on a street corner, tucked 
away in one of those snug spaces in which one 
sometimes finds a crowded fruit-stand, I dis- 
covered, one day, a macaroni factory. Within 
a space perhaps three feet wide and ten or 
twelve feet in length one man and a boy con- 
ducted the whole business of the sale as well as 
the manufacture of macaroni, from the raw 
grain to the completed article of trade. The 
process, as it was carried on in this narrow space, 
was necessarily a simple one. There was a bag 
of flour, a box in which to mix the paste, and a 

192 



CHILD LABOUR 193 

press by which this paste was forced through 
holes that converted it into hollow tubes. Af- 
terward these hollow tubes were laid out on a 
cloth frame which, because there was no room 
inside, had been set up in the street. After 
leaving this cloth frame the macaroni was hung 
up on little wooden forms for inspection and for 
sale. 

One of the most curious and interesting places 
on the street was an apothecary's shop in which 
the apothecary manufactured all his own drugs, 
and acted at the same time as the poor man's 
physician or medical adviser. This man had 
never studied pharmacy in a college. His 
knowledge of drugs consisted entirely of the 
traditions and trade secrets which had come 
down to him from his predecessor in the busi- 
ness. His shop was filled with sweet-smelling 
herbs, gathered for him by the peasants, and 
from these he brewed his medicines. The 
skeleton of a fish hung over the counter from 
which medicines were dispensed, and the shelves 
behind were filled with many curious and musty 
bottles. 

The apothecary himself was a very serious 
person, with a high, pale forehead and the ab- 
sorbed air of a man who feels the weight of the 
knowledge he carries around with him. All 
these things, especially the smell of the herbs, 



i94 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

were quite awe-inspiring, and undoubtedly con- 
tributed something to the efficacy of the med- 
icines. 

It is a very busy street in which the apothe- 
cary, the macaroni manufacturer, and the others 
are located. In fact, it seems as if work never 
stopped there, for it is full of little shops where 
men sit in their doorways or at the open win- 
dows until late at night, working steadily at 
their various trades, making the things they 
sell, and stopping only now and then to sell 
the things they make. The whole region is a 
hive of industry, for it is the neighbourhood 
where the artisans live, those skilled workmen 
who make everything by hand that, in our part 
of the world, we have long since learned to make 
by machine. In fact, in this street it is possible 
to get a very good picture, I suspect, of the way 
in which trade and industry were carried on in 
other parts of Europe before the age of steam. 

About nine o'clock Saturday night — the 
night upon which I arrived in Catania — I 
was walking down one of the side streets in this 
part of the city, when my attention was at- 
tracted to a man, sitting in his doorway, work- 
ing by the light of a little smoky lamp. He was 
engaged in some delicate sort of iron work, and, 
as near as I could make out, he seemed to be a 
tool-maker. 



CHILD LABOUR 195 

What particularly attracted my attention was 
a little girl, certainly not more than seven years 
of age, who was busily engaged in polishing 
and sharpening the stamps he used. I stopped 
for a moment and watched this man and child, 
working steadily, silently, at this late hour of 
the night. I could but marvel at the patience 
and the skill the child showed at her work. It 
was the first time in my life that I had seen such 
a very little child at work, although I saw many 
others in the days that followed. 

I have often heard it said that people who 
are born under the soft southern skies are habit- 
ually indolent, and never learn to work there, 
as they do in more northern latitudes. This is 
certainly not true of Sicily, for, so far as my 
experience goes, there is no other country in 
Europe where incessant labour is so largely the 
lot of the masses of the people. Certainly there 
is no other country where so much of the labour 
of all kinds, the skilled labour of the artisan as 
well as the rough labour of digging and carrying 
on the streets and in the mines, is performed by 
children, especially boys. 

There is a law against Sunday labour in 
Catania, but the next morning, as I passed 
through this same quarter of the city, I found the 
majority of the people still busily at work. I 
stopped to watch a man who was making man- 



196 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

dolins. This man lived in one room, which was 
at the same time a workshop, kitchen, and bed- 
room. There was a great heap of mattresses 
piled high upon the bed in one corner. A little 
charcoal brazier, on which the cooking for the 
family was performed, stood upon the work- 
bench. The ceiling was hung with finished in- 
struments, and the pavement in front of the 
house was piled with others in various stages of 
completion. This room was occupied by a 
family of five, all of whom, with the exception 
of the wife and mother, were engaged, each in 
their different ways, in the work of manufactur- 
ing mandolins. All the skilled work (the set- 
ting of the decorations and the polishing of the 
frames) was performed by the boys, but a little 
girl who was standing near seemed to be making 
herself handy as a helper in the work of the 
others. 

In this treeless country, where there is al- 
most no wood of any kind to be had, the most 
useful building material, after stone and plaster, 
seems to be tile. Not only the roofs but the 
floors of most of the buildings are made of this 
material, and its manufacture is consequently 
one of the principal minor industries of the 
country. One day, while I was wandering 
about in the outskirts of Catania, I ran across 
a plant where two men and three little boys 



CHILD LABOUR 197 

were at work mixing the clay, forming it into 
octagonal shapes, and piling it out in the sun 
to dry. The two men were at work in the 
shade of a large open shed, but I could not 
make out what they were doing. As nearly as 
I could see, almost all of the actual work was 
performed by the children, who ranged, I should 
say, from eight to twelve years of age. The 
work of carrying the heavy clay, and piling it 
up in the sun after it had been formed into tiles, 
was done by the younger children. 

I am certain that if I had not seen them with 
my own eyes I would never have believed that 
such very little children could carry such heavy 
loads, or that they could work so systematically 
and steadily as they were compelled to do in 
order to keep pace with the rapid movements of 
the older boy, who was molding the tiles from 
the soft clay. The older boy could not have 
been, as I have said, more than twelve years of 
age, but he worked with all the skill and the 
rapidity of an experienced piece-worker driven 
at the top of his speed. I was so filled with 
pity and at the same time with admiration for 
this boy that, as I was unable to speak to him, 
I ventured to offer him a small coin in token 
of my appreciation of the skill with which he 
worked. So intent was he on his task, however, 
that he would not stop his work even to pick up 



198 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

the money I proffered him, but simply thanked 
me and nodded his head for me to place it on 
the bench beside him. 

These instances of skilled labour among chil- 
dren are by no means exceptional. At another 
time I remember stopping to look at a little boy 
who, it seemed to me, could not be more than 
eight or nine years of age, working side by side 
with a man, evidently his father, together with 
several other men, all of them engaged in build- 
ing a boat. The boy I speak of was engaged 
in finishing off with a plane the hardwood rail 
of the sides of the boat, and as I watched him at 
his task I was again compelled to wonder at 
the ease and skill with which these little fellows 
use their tools. 

All these things, as I have said, gave me an 
idea of the manner in which the trades were 
carried on before the extensive use of machinery 
had brought the factory system into existence. 
It showed me also the easy way in which, in 
those days, the industrial education of children 
was carried on. When the work in the handi- 
crafts was performed in the house, or in a shop 
adjoining the house, it was an easy thing for 
the father to hand down to the son the trade he 
himself had practised. Under the conditions 
in which trades are carried on in Sicily to-day 
children are literally born to the trade which 



CHILD LABOUR 199 

their fathers practise. In these homes, where 
the shop and the home are crowded together in 
one or two rooms, children see their fathers and 
mothers at work from the time they are born. 
As soon as they are able to handle a tool of any 
kind the boys, at any rate, and frequently the 
girls also, are set to work helping their parents. 
As the father, in his turn, has probably inherited 
the accumulated traditions and skill of gener- 
ations that preceded him in the same trade, his 
children are able to get from him, in the easiest 
and most natural way, an industrial education 
such as no other kind of school can give. 

Whatever may be the disadvantages of the 
people of Sicily in other respects, they have an 
advantage over the Negro in learning the skilled 
trades, the value of which it is difficult to esti- 
mate. Everywhere one sees the evidences of 
this skill with the hand, not only in the public 
buildings, but in some of the common objects of 
daily use. I have already referred to the way 
in which the ordinary little two-wheeled carts, 
which take the place of the ordinary farmer's 
wagon in this country, are decorated. I have 
seen in Catania men at work practically hew- 
ing these carts out of the log. I do not know to 
what extent the frame of the wagon is hewn out 
in this way, but, at any rate, the spokes are. 
Every detail is worked out with the greatest 



200 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

possible skill, even to the point of carving little 
figures or faces at the ends of the beams that 
make the frames. Likewise the harness of the 
donkeys that draw these carts is an elaborate 
and picturesque affair which must require a 
vast amount of patience and skill to make. The 
point I wish particularly to emphasize here is 
that all this skill in the handicrafts, which has 
become traditional in a people, is the best kind 
of preparation for every kind of higher edu- 
cation. In this respect the Italian, like the 
Japanese and Chinese, as well as every other 
race which has had centuries of training in the 
handicrafts, has an advantage over the Negro 
that can only be overcome when the masses of 
the Negro people have secured a training of the 
hand and a skill in the crafts that correspond to 
those of other races. 

Not only are children, especially boys, em- 
ployed at a very early age in all the trades I 
have mentioned, but young boys from fourteen 
to sixteen perform, as I have said, in the mines 
and elsewhere an incredible amount of the crude, 
rough work of the community. 

I remember, one day in Palermo, seeing, for 
the first time in my life, boys, who were certainly 
not more than fourteen years of age, engaged 
in carrying on their backs earth from a cellar 
that was being excavated for a building. Men 



CHILD LABOUR 201 

did the work of digging, but the mere drudgery 
of carrying the earth from the bottom of the 
excavation to the surface was performed by these 
boys. It was not simply the fact that mere 
children were engaged in this heavy work which 
impressed me. It was the slow, dragging steps, 
the fixed and unalterable expression of weariness 
that showed in every line of their bodies. Later 
I learned to recognize this as the habitual man- 
ner and expression of the carusi, which is the 
name that the Italians give to those boys who 
are employed in the sulphur mines to carry the 
crude ore up from the mines where it is dug and 
to load it into the cars by which it is conveyed to 
the surface. 

The work in a sulphur mine is organized in 
many respects, I learned, like that of a coal 
mine. The actual work of digging the sulphur 
is performed by the miner, who is paid by the 
amount of crude ore he succeeds in getting out. 
He, in his turn, has a man or a boy, sometimes 
two or three of them, to assist him in getting 
the ore out of the mine to the smelter, where it 
is melted and refined. As I myself had had 
some experience as a boy in work similar to 
this in the mines of West Virginia, I was inter- 
ested in learning all I could in regard to these 
boys and the conditions under which they 
worked. 



202 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

In the case of boys employed for this work, 
the Sicilians have a custom of binding out their 
children to the miner, or picconiero, as he is 
called. Such a boy is then called, in the lan- 
guage of the country, a caruso. As a matter of 
fact, a picconiero who buys a boy from his 
parents to employ him as a caruso actually pur- 
chases a slave. The manner in which the pur- 
chase is made is as follows : In Sicily, where the 
masses of the people are so wretchedly poor in 
everything else, they are nevertheless unusually 
rich in children, and, as often happens, the 
family that has the largest number of mouths 
to fill has the least to put in them. It is from 
these families that the carusi are recruited. The 
father who turns his child over to a miner re- 
ceives in return a sum of money in the form of a 
loan. The sum usually amounts to from eight 
to thirty dollars, according to the age of the 
boy, his strength and general usefulness. With 
the payment of this sum the child is turned over 
absolutely to his master. From this slavery 
there is no hope of freedom, because neither the 
parents nor the child will ever have sufficient 
money to repay the original loan. 

Strange and terrible stories are told about 
the way in which these boy slaves have been 
treated by their masters. Before coming to 
Sicily I had met and talked with persons who 



CHILD LABOUR 203 

described to me the processions of half-naked 
boys, their bodies bowed under the heavy weight 
of the loads they carried, groaning and curs- 
ing as they made their way up out of the hot 
and sulphurous holes in the earth, carrying 
the ore from the mine to the smelter. All 
that I had heard elsewhere was confirmed later 
by the details furnished by official reports and 
special studies of conditions in the mining re- 
gions, made at different times and by different 
persons. In these reports I learned that the 
mines had been in the past the refuge of a 
debased^ and criminal population, whose vices 
made the bleak, sulphur-smitten region where 
the mines are located as much like hell as it 
looks. 

The cruelties to which the child slaves have 
been subjected, as related by those who have 
studied them, are as bad as anything that was 
ever reported of the cruelties of Negro slavery. 
These boy slaves were frequently beaten and 
pinched, in order to wring from their over- 
burdened bodies the last drop of strength they 
had in them. When beatings did not suffice, it 
was the custom to singe the calves of their legs 
with lanterns to put them again on their feet. 
If they sought to escape from this slavery in 
flight, they were captured and beaten, sometimes 
even killed. 



204 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

As they climbed out of the hot and poisonous 
atmosphere of the mines their bodies, naked to 
the waist and dripping with sweat, were chilled 
by the cold draughts in the corridors leading out 
of the mines, and this sudden transition was the 
frequent cause of pneumonia and tuberculosis. 

In former years children of six and seven 
years of age were employed at these crushing 
and terrible tasks. Under the heavy burdens 
(averaging about forty pounds) they were com- 
pelled to carry, they often became deformed, 
and the number of cases of curvature of the 
spine and deformations of the bones of the chest 
reported was very large. More than that, 
these children were frequently made the vic- 
tims of the lust and unnatural vices of their 
masters. It is not surprising, therefore, that 
they early gained the appearance of gray old 
men, and that it has become a common saying 
that a caruso rarely reaches the age of twenty- 
five. 

It was with something of all this in my mind 
that I set out from Palermo a little before day- 
light one morning in September to visit the 
mines at Campofranco, on the southern side 
of the island, in the neighbourhood of Girgenti. 
My misgivings were considerably increased when, 
upon reaching the railway station to take the 
train, I found that the guide and interpreter 



CHILD LABOUR 205 

who had been employed the night before to 
accompany us on the trip had not made his 
appearance. We waited until all the porters 
at the station and the guards on the train were 
fairly in a fever of excitement in their well-meant 
efforts to get us and our baggage on the train. 
Then, at the last moment, with the feeling that 
we were taking a desperate chance, we scrambled 
aboard and started off into a wild region, which 
no guide-book had charted and, so far as I knew, 
no tourist had ever visited. 

The train carried us for some distance along 
the fertile plain between the sea and the hills. 
It was just possible to make out in the twilight 
of the early morning the dim outlines of the 
little towns we passed. At length, just as we 
were able to catch the first gleams of the morn- 
ing sun along the crests of the mountains, the 
railway turned abruptly southward and the 
train plunged into a wide valley between the 
brown and barren hills. 

At Roccapalumba we left the main line of 
the railway, which turns eastward from there 
in the direction of Catania, and continued our 
journey with the somewhat ruder comforts of 
an accommodation train. From this point on 
the way grew rougher, the country wilder, and 
the only companions of our journey were the 
rude country folk, with an occasional sprinkling 



206 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

of miners. At the little town of Lercara we 
entered the zone of the sulphur mines. From 
now on, at nearly every station we passed, I saw 
great masses of the bright yellow substance, 
piled in cars, waiting to be carried down to the 
port of Girgenti for shipment to all parts of the 
world, and particularly to the United States, 
which is still the largest market for this Sicilian 
gold. 

The nearer the train approached our desti- 
nation, the more uncomfortable I grew about 
the prospect that was before us. I felt very sure 
that I should be able to reach Campofranco 
and perhaps see something of the mines, but 
whether I should ever be able to get out again 
and what would become of me if I were com- 
pelled to seek shelter in some of the unpromising 
places I saw along the way was very uncertain. 

Fortunately, Dr. Robert E. Park, of Boston, 
who was travelling w T ith me, and who accom- 
panied me on nearly all of my excursions of this 
kind, was with me on this trip. Doctor Park 
had a pretty thorough mastery of the German 
language, and could speak a little French, but 
no Italian. He had, however, an Italian gram- 
mar in his satchel, and when we finally found 
ourselves at sea, in a region where neither 
English, German, nor French was of any help 
to us, he took that grammar from his satchel 



CHILD LABOUR 207 

and set to work to learn enough Italian between 
Palermo and Campofranco to be able to make 
at least our most urgent wants known. For 
four hours he devoted himself industriously to 
the study of that beautiful and necessary lan- 
guage. It was a desperate case, and I think I 
am safe in saying that Doctor Park studied 
grammar more industriously during those four 
hours than he ever did before in his life. At any 
rate, by the time the train had crossed the rocky 
crest of the mountains which divide the north 
and south sides of Sicily, and before we disem- 
barked at the lonesome little station of Campo- 
franco, he could speak enough Italian, mixed 
with German, French, and English, to make him- 
self understood. Perhaps another reason for 
Doctor Park's success was the fact that the Ital- 
ians understand the sign language pretty well. 

The mines at Campofranco are on the slope 
of the mountain, just above the railway station. 
A mile or more across the great empty valley, 
high up on the slope of the opposite mountain, 
is the village from which the mines get their 
name, a little cluster of low stone and cement 
buildings, clinging to the mountainside as if 
they were in imminent danger of slipping into 
the valley below. 

A few hundred yards above the station 
great banks of refuse had been dumped into 



2o8 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

the valley, and a place levelled off on the side 
of the mountain, where the furnaces and 
smelters were located. There were great rows 
of kilns, like great pots, half buried in the earth, 
in which the ore is melted and then run off 
into forms, where it is cooled and allowed to 
harden. 

I confess that I had been very dubious as 
to the way that we were likely to be received 
at the mines, seeing that we did not know the 
customs nor the people, and had very scant 
supply of Italian in which to make known our 
wants. The manager, however, who proved 
to be a very polite and dignified man, could 
speak a little French and some English. He 
seemed to take a real pleasure in showing us 
about the works. He explained the methods 
by which the sulphur was extracted, insisted 
upon our drinking a glass of wine, and was even 
kind enough to loan me a horse and guide 
when I expressed a desire to rent one of the 
passing donkeys to convey me to some of the 
more inaccessible places, farther up the moun- 
tain, where I could see the miners had burrowed 
into the earth in search of sulphur. On the 
vast slope of the mountain and at a distance 
they looked like ants running in and out of 
little holes in the earth. 

It was at the mouth of one of these entrances 



CHILD LABOUR 209 

to the mines that I got my first definite notion 
of what sulphur miners look like — those un- 
fortunate creatures who wear out their lives 
amid the poisonous fumes and the furnace heat 
of these underground hells. There was a rum- 
ble of a car, and presently a man, almost stark 
naked, stepped out of the dark passageway. He 
was worn, haggard, and gray, and his skin had 
a peculiar grayish-white tinge. He spoke in a 
husky whisper, but I do not know whether that 
is one of the characteristic effects of the work 
in the mines or not. I was told that, in ad- 
dition to other dangers, the sulphur has a bad 
effect upon the lungs. It was explained to me 
that the sulphur dust gets into the lungs and 
clogs them up, and that is what accounts for 
the groans of the carusi, so frequently spoken of, 
when they are tugging up the steep and winding 
passageways with the heavy burdens of crude 
ore on their backs. 

It had been many years since I had been in a 
mine, but as I entered the dark, damp gallery 
and felt the sudden underground chill, the 
memories of my early experiences all came back 
to me. As we got farther into the mine, how- 
ever, the air seemed to grow warmer. Sud- 
denly a door at the side of the gallery opened; 
a blast of hot air, like that from a furnace, 
burst out into the corridor, and another of those 



210 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

half-naked men, dripping with perspiration, 
stepped out. 

We passed at intervals along the main cor- 
ridor a number of these doors which, as I dis- 
covered, led down into parts of the mine where 
the men were at work. It seemed incredible 
to me that any one could live and work in such 
heat, but I had come there to see what a sul- 
phur mine was like, so I determined to try the 
experiment. 

The side passage which I entered was, in 
fact, little more than a burrow, twisting and 
winding its way, but going constantly deeper 
and deeper into the dark depths of the earth. 
I had known what it was to work deep down 
under the earth, but I never before so thoroughly 
realized what it meant to be in the bowels of 
the earth as I did while I was groping my way 
through the dark and winding passages of this 
sulphur mine. 

It is down at the bottom of these holes, and 
in this steaming atmosphere, that the miners 
work. They loosen the ore from the walls of 
the seams in which it is found, and then it is 
carried up out of these holes in sacks by the 
carusi. 

In the mine which I visited the work of 
getting the ore to the surface was performed 
in a modern and comparatively humane way. 



CHILD LABOUR 211 

It was simply necessary to carry the ore from 
the different points where it is mined to the car, 
by which it is then transported to the smelter. 
In those mines, however, where the work is 
still carried on in the old, traditional fashion, 
which has been in vogue as far back as any one 
can remember, all the ore is carried on the backs 
of boys. In cases where the mine descended 
to the depth of two, three, or four hundred 
feet, the task of carrying these loads of ore to 
the surface is simply heartbreaking. I can 
well understand that persons who have seen 
conditions at the worst should speak of the 
children who have been condemned to this 
slavery as the most unhappy creatures on earth. 

From all that I can learn, however, the con- 
ditions have changed for the better in recent 
years. In 1902 a law was passed which for- 
bade the employment of children under thir- 
teen years in underground work, and to this 
was added, a little later, a provision which for- 
bade, after 1905, the employment of children 
under fifteen in the mines. 

So far as I am able to say, this provision was 
carried out in the mine I visited, for I did not 
see children at work anywhere inside the mine. 
I saw a number of the poor little creatures at 
work in the dumps outside the mine, however. 
They were carrying refuse ore in bags on their 



212 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

backs, throwing it on screens, and then loading 
the finer particles back into the cars. Once 
having seen these gangs of boys at work, I 
could never mistake their slow, dragging move- 
ments and the expression of dull despair upon 
their faces. 

It is said that the employment of boys in the 
sulphur mines is decreasing. According to law, 
the employment of children under fifteen years 
of age has been forbidden since 1905. As is well 
known, however, in Italy as in America, it is 
much easier to make laws than to enforce them. 
This is especially true in Sicily. The only fig- 
ures which I have been able to obtain upon the 
subject show that from 1880 to 1898 there was 
an enormous increase in the number of children 
employed in and about the mines. In 1880 
there were 2,419 children under fifteen years 
working there, among whom were eight girls. 
Of this number 88 were seven and 163 were 
eight years of age, while 12 per cent, of the 
whole number were under nine years of age. 
In 1898, however, the number of children under 
fifteen years of age was 7,032, of whom 5,232 
were at work inside the mines. At this time the 
Government had already attempted to put 
some restrictions on the employment of children 
in the mines, but the age limit had not been 
fixed as high as fifteen years. 



CHILD LABOUR 213 

The sulphur mines are located on the southern 
slopes of the mountains that cross Sicily from 
east to west. About ten miles below Campo- 
franco the two branches of the railway, one 
running directly south from Roccapalumba, 
and the other running southwest from Calta- 
nisetta, come together a few miles above Gir- 
genti. On the slopes of the broad valleys 
through which these two branches of the railway 
run are located nearly all the sulphur mines in 
Sicily. From these mines, which furnish some- 
thing like 70 per cent, of the world's supply of 
sulphur, a constant stream of this yellow ore 
flows down to the sea at the port of Girgenti. 

After leaving Campofranco I travelled 
through this whole region. In many places the 
mountain slopes are fairly honeycombed with 
holes where the miners in years past have dug 
their way into the mountain in search of the 
precious yellow mineral. For many miles in 
every direction the vegetation has been blasted 
by the poisonous smoke and vapours from the 
smelters, and the whole country has a blotched 
and scrofulous appearance which is depressing 
to look upon, particularly when one considers 
the amount of misery and the number of human 
lives it has cost to create this condition. ' I have 
never in my life seen any place that seemed to 
come so near meeting the description of the 



2i 4 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

"abomination of desolation" referred to in the 
Bible. There is even a certain grandeur in the 
desolation of this country which looks as if the 
curse of God rested upon it 

I am not prepared just now to say to what 
extent I believe in a physical hell in the next 
world, but a sulphur mine in Sicily is about the 
nearest thing to hell that lexpect to see in this life. 

As I have already said, however, there are 
indications that in the sulphur mines, as else- 
where in Sicily, the situation of the man farthest 
down is improving. I pray God that it is so, 
for I could not picture an existence more miser- 
able than the slow torture of this crushing 
labour in the hot and poisonous air of these 
sulphur mines. 

Let me say also that I came away from the 
sulphur mines and from Sicily with a very much 
better opinion of the people than when I entered. 
I went to Italy with the notion that the Sicilians 
were a race of brigands, a sullen and irritable 
people who were disposed at any moment to be 
swept off their feet by violent and murderous 
passions. I came away with the feeling that, 
whatever might be the faults of the masses of 
the people, they were, at the very least, more 
sinned against than sinning, and that they de- 
serve the sympathy rather than the condemna- 
tion of the world. 



CHILD LABOUR 215 

The truth is that, as far as my personal ex- 
perience goes, I was never treated more kindly 
in my whole life than I was the day when, com- 
ing as a stranger, without an introduction of 
any kind, I ventured to visit the region which 
has the reputation of being the most wicked, 
and is certainly the most unfortunate, in Europe. 
I mean the region around and north of Girgenti, 
which is the seat at once of the sulphur mines 
and the Mafia. 

If any one had told me before I went to Sicily 
that I would be willing to intrust my life to 
Sicilians away down in the darkness of a sulphur 
mine, I should have believed that such a person 
had lost his mind. I had read and heard so 
much of murders of the Mafia in Sicily, that for 
a long time I had had a horror of the name of 
Sicilians; but when I came in contact with them, 
before I knew it, I found myself trusting them 
absolutely to such an extent that I willingly 
followed them into the bowels of the earth; into 
a hot, narrow, dark sulphur mine where, without 
a moment's warning, they might have demanded 
my life or held me, if they cared to, for a ran- 
som. Nothing of this kind occurred; on the 
other hand, I repeat, every Sicilian with whom I 
came in contact in the sulphur mine treated me in 
the most kindly manner, and I came away from 
their country having the highest respect for them. 



2i6 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

I did not meet, while I was there, a single 
person, from the superintendent to the lowest 
labourer at the mines, who did not seem, not 
only willing, but even anxious, to assist me to 
see and learn everything I wanted to know. 
What is more, Campofranco was the only 
place in Europe where I met men who refused 
to accept money for a service rendered me. 



CHAPTER XII 

FIUME, BUDAPEST, AND THE IMMIGF.ANT 

IT WAS a cold, cloudy, windy, rainy day when 
the little coasting vessel that was to take 
us across the Adriatic drew out from the 
gray and misty harbour of the ancient city of 
Ancona and started in the direction of Fiume, the 
single point at which the Kingdom of Hungary 
touches the sea. I had read of the hardships of 
the early immigrants, and I heard once an old 
coloured man, who had been carried to America 
as a slave, tell of the long journey of himself and 
some fifty others, all crowded together in a little 
sailing vessel. It was not, however, until this 
trip of a few hours on the Adriatic in a dirty, ill- 
smelling little vessel that I began to understand, 
although I had crossed the ocean several times, 
how uncomfortable a sea voyage might be. 

Fortunately the journey was not a long one, 
and after the vessel found itself in the shelter of 
one of the beautiful green islands which are 
stationed like sentinels along the Dalmatian 
coast, it was possible to go on deck and enjoy 
the view of the rugged and broken coast line. 

217 



2i8 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

It was indeed a splendid sight, in the clear light 
of the late afternoon, to watch the great blue- 
gray clouds roll up over the green and glistening 
masses of the islands, which lifted themselves 
on every side out of the surrounding sea. 

What I had heard and read of the Dalmatian 
coast had led me to look for the signs of an 
ancient civilization, not unlike that which I had 
left in Italy. What impressed me at first sight 
about Fiume, however, was the brand-new and 
modern character of everything in view. I do 
not mean that the city had any of the loose- 
jointed and straggling newness of some of our 
western American towns. It had rather the 
newness and completeness of one of those 
modern German cities, which seem to have been 
planned and erected out of hand, at the com- 
mand of some higher authority. In that part 
of Germany which I visited I noticed that 
nothing was allowed to grow up naturally, in the 
comfortable and haphazard disorder that one 
finds in some parts of America. This is par- 
ticularly true of the cities. Everything is tagged 
and labelled, and ordered with military pre- 
cision. Even the rose-bushes in the gardens 
seem to show the effect of military discipline. 
Trimmed and pruned, they stand up straight, 
in long and regular rows, as if they were con- 
tinually presenting arms. 



THE IMMIGRANT 219 

The impression which I got of modern Hun- 
gary at Fiume was confirmed by what I saw a 
few days later at Budapest, the capital. There 
was the same air of newness and novelty, as if 
the city had been erected overnight, and the 
people had not yet grown used to it. 

A little further acquaintance with the cities 
of Fiume and Budapest made it plain, however, 
in each case, that the new city which filled the 
eye of the stranger had been, as a matter of fact, 
built over, or, rather, added to, a more ancient 
one. 

In Fiume, for example, somewhat hidden 
away behind the new buildings which line the 
broad avenue of the modern Magyar city, there 
is still preserved the outlines of the ancient 
Italian town, with its narrow, winding streets, 
crowded with all the quaint and vivid life, the 
petty traffic, and the varied human sights and 
sounds with which I had become familiar during 
my journey through Italy. 

So in Budapest, across the river from the 
modern Hungarian, or, rather, Magyar city of 
Pest, there is the ancient German city of Buda, 
with its castle and palace, which dates back into 
the Middle Ages. 

What is still more interesting is that in these 
two modern cities of Fiume and Pest, in which 
one sees and feels the impress of a strong and 



220 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

masterful people, one meets everywhere, in the 
midst of this feverish and artificial modern life, 
evidences of the habit and manners which belong 
to an older and simpler age. 

For example, it struck me as curious that in a 
city which is so well provided with the latest 
type of electric street cars one should see peasant 
women trudging in from the country with heavy 
loads of vegetables on their backs; and, in a city 
where the Government is seeking to provide 
modern houses for the labouring classes, with 
all the conveniences that invention can supply, 
one should see these same peasant women peace- 
fully sleeping on the pavement or under the 
wagons in the public square, just as they have 
been so long accustomed to sleep, during the 
harvest times, in the open fields. 

In the same way, in another connection, it 
seemed strange to read in the report of the 
Minister of Agriculture that an agricultural 
school at Debreczen, which had been carried on 
in connection with an agricultural college at the 
same place, had been closed because "the pupils 
of this school, being in daily contact with the 
first-year pupils of the college, boarding at the 
Pallag, attempted to imitate their ways, wanted 
more than was necessary for their future social 
position, and at the same time they aimed at a 
position they were not able to maintain." 






THE IMMIGRANT 221 

All this suggests and illustrates the rapidity 
with which changes are going on in Hungary 
and the haste with which the leaders in the 
Government and in social life are moving to 
catch up with and, if possible, get ahead of the 
procession of progress in the rest of Europe. 

The trouble seems to be that in Hungary 
progress has begun at the top, with the Govern- 
ment, instead of at the bottom, with the people. 
The Government, apparently, desires and hopes 
to give the masses of the people an education 
that will increase their usefulness, without at 
the same time increasing their wants and 
stimulating their desire to rise. Its efforts to 
improve the condition of the masses are further 
confused by a determination to suppress the 
other nationalities and preserve the domination 
of the Magyar race. In short, I think I might 
sum up the situation by saying that Hungary 
is trying the doubtful experiment of attempting 
to increase the efficiency of the people without 
giving them freedom. 

The result is that while the Government is 
closing up the schools because, as the Minister 
of Agriculture says, "an important political 
and social principle is endangered" when stu- 
dents begin to hope and dream of a higher and 
better situation in life than that in which they 
were born, the masses of the people are emi- 



222 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

grating to America in order to better their con- 
dition. 

At Fiume I had an opportunity to study at 
close range what I may call the process of this 
emigration. I had, in other words, an oppor- 
tunity to see something, not merely of the 
manner in which the stream of emigration, flow- 
ing out from the little inland villages, is collected 
and cared for at Fiume until it pours into and is 
carried away in the ships, but also to get a more 
definite idea of the motives and social forces 
that are working together to bring about this 
vast migration of the rural populations of south- 
eastern Europe. 

In no country in Europe, not even in Italy, 
has emigration been so carefully studied, and 
in no country has more been done to direct and 
control emigration than in Hungary. At the 
same time I think it is safe to say that nowhere 
else has emigration brought so many changes in 
the political and social life of the people. At 
one time, indeed, it seemed as if Hungary pro- 
posed to make emigration a state monopoly. 
This was when the Government, in granting to 
the Cunard Steamship Company a monopoly 
of the emigrant business at Fiume, made a con- 
tract to furnish that line at least 30,000 emi- 
grants a year. At that time there were between 
one hundred and two hundred thousand emi- 



THE IMMIGRANT 223 

grants leaving Hungary every year, most of 
whom were making the journey to America by 
way of the German lines at Hamburg and 
Bremen. 

It is said that the Hungarian Government, in 
order to turn the tide of emigration in the direc- 
tion of Fiume and swell the traffic at that port, 
directed that all steamship tickets should be 
sold by Government agents, who refused per- 
mission to emigrants to leave the country by 
other than the Fiume route. 

Since then, however, Hungary has, I under- 
stand, modified its contract with the Cunard 
Company in such a manner that it does not 
appear as if the Government had actually gone 
into the business of exporting its own citizens, 
and, instead of attempting to direct emigration 
through Fiume by something amounting almost 
to force, it has rather sought to invite traffic 
by creating at this post model accommodations 
for emigrants. 

As a matter of fact the Government has, as a 
rule, attempted to discourage emigration rather 
than increase it. Where that was not possible 
it has still tried to maintain its hold upon its 
citizens in America; to keep alive their interest 
in their native land and make the emigration, 
as far as possible, a temporary absence, in order 
that the state should not suffer a permanent 



224 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

loss of its labouring population, and in order, 
apparently, that the stream of gold which had 
poured into the country as a result of this 
emigration might not cease. 

The actual amount of money which is brought 
back by returning emigrants, or those living 
temporarily in America, cannot be definitely 
determined. For example, not less than 47,000 
emigrants returned to Hungary in 1907. It is 
estimated, if I remember rightly, that each 
returned emigrant brought home at least $200, 
while the average immigrant, not permanently 
settled in America, sends back every year about 
$120, which is probably more money than he 
could earn at home. In the years 1900 to 
1906, inclusive, there was sent to Hungary by 
money orders alone, $22,917,566. In the year 
1903 an official investigation shows that, in 
addition to the money which went from America 
in other ways, $17,000,000 was sent to Hungary 
through banks. 

1 One result of this influx of money from Amer- 
ica has been that the peasant has been able to 
gratify his passion to obtain for himself a little 
strip of land or increase the size of the farm 
he already possesses. In fact, in certain 
places mentioned by Miss Balch in her 
book, "Our Slavic Fellow Citizen," the de- 
mand for land has been so great that it has 



THE IMMIGRANT 225 

increased in value between 500 and 600 per 
cent.* 

In one year, 1903, according to Miss Balch, 
4,317 emigrants from one county in Croatia 
sent home $560,860, which is an average of not 
quite $130 per immigrant. With this money 
4,116 homes were bettered, by paying debts, 
buying more land, or making improvements. 

These facts give, however, but a small indica- 
tion of the influence which immigration has had, 
directly and indirectly, upon the conditions of 
life among the masses of the people in Hungary 
and other portions of southeastern Europe. For 
one thing, in arousing the hopes, ambitions, and 
discontent of the so-called "inferior" peoples, 
it has added fuel to the racial conflicts of the 
kingdom. 

The Slovak or the Croatian who comes to 
America does not at once lose his interest in the 
political and social struggles of his native land. 
On the contrary, in America, where he has 
opportunity to read newspapers printed in his 
own language, and to freely discuss racial poli- 
cies in the societies and clubs which have been 
formed by the different nationalities in many 
parts of the United States, the average Slovak 
or Croatian in America is likely to take a more 
intelligent interest in the struggle for national 

*Charities Publication Committee, 1910. 



226 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

existence of his own people than he took at 
home. 

In the case of members of some of the minor 
nationalities it has happened that, owing to the 
persistence with which the Hungarian Govern- 
ment had discouraged their efforts to teach their 
own languages, it is not until they have reached 
America that they have had opportunity to read 
their mother-tongue. 

Some indication of the interest which the 
different immigrant peoples take in the struggles 
of the members of their own race, in their native 
land, is given by the work which several of these 
nationalist societies are doing in America. The 
National Slavonic Society organizes political 
meetings, raises funds for Slovak political pris- 
oners in Hungary, and scatters Slovak literature 
for the purpose of arousing sympathy and in- 
terest in the Slovak cause. 

In his book, " Racial Problems in Hungary," 
Seton-Watson, who has made a special study 
of the condition of the Slovaks, says: 

"The returned Slovak emigrants who have saved money 
in the United States are steadily acquiring small holdings in 
Hungary, and helping to propagate ideas of freedom and 
nationality among their neighbours. . . . They speedily 
learn to profit by the free institutions of their adopted country, 
and to-day the 400,000 Slovaks of America possess a national 
culture and organization which present a striking contrast to 
the cramped development of their kinsmen in Hungary. There 



THE IMMIGRANT 227 

are more Slovak newspapers in America than in Hungary; 
but the Magyars seek to redress the balance by refusing to 
deliver these American journals through the Hungarian post- 
office. Everywhere among the emigrants, leagues, societies, 
and clubs flourish undisturbed; . . . these societies do all 
in their power to awaken Slovak sentiment, and contribute 
materially to the support of the Slovak press in Hungary.* 

Seton- Watson adds that "the independence 
and confidence of the returned emigrants are in 
striking contrast with the pessimism and pas- 
sivity of the elder generation." It is for this 
reason, perhaps, that the Magyars, who rep- 
resent the " superior race" in Hungary, say that 
" America has spoiled the Slovak emigrant." 

In travelling across Hungary from Fiume 
to Budapest, and thence to Cracow, Poland, 
I passed successively through regions and dis- 
tricts inhabited by many different racial types, 
but I think I gained a more vivid notion of the 
strange mixture of races which make up the 
population of the Dual Monarchy from what 
I saw in Fiume than in any other part of the 
country. In Budapest, which is the great 
melting pot of the races in Hungary, there is 
much the same uniformity in the dress and 
manners of the different races that one meets 
in any other large and cosmopolitan city. 
Fiume, on the contrary, has a much larger 
number of people who seem to be still in touch 

*Quoted by Miss Balch in "Our Slavic Fellow Citizens," p. 116. 



228 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

with the customs and life of their native vil- 
lages, and have not yet learned to be ashamed 
to wear the quaint and picturesque costumes 
of the regions to which they belong. 

Among the most striking costumes which I 
remember to have seen were those of the Mon- 
tenegrin traders, with their red caps, embroid- 
ered vests, and the red sashes around their 
waists, which made them look like brigands. 
After these, perhaps the most picturesque 
costumes which I saw were worn by a troop of 
Dalmatian girls, the most striking feature of 
whose costume was the white woollen leggings, 
tied at the knee with ribbons. One figure in 
particular that I recall was that of a little 
woman striding through the streets of Fiume, 
driving a little train of beautiful cream-coloured 
oxen. 

All these distinctions of costume emphasized 
each other by contrast, and as they each signified 
differences in traditions, prejudices, and pur- 
poses of the people to whom they belonged, they 
gave one a sort of picture of the clash of races 
in this strange and interesting country. 

Even among those races which are no longer 
divided by costume and habits, racial dis- 
tinctions seem to be more clearly drawn than 
at Budapest. For example, to a large extent 
the business of the city seems to be monop- 



THE IMMIGRANT 229 

olized by Germans and Jews. The Govern- 
ment officials are Magyars, but the bulk of the 
population are Italians and Croatians. As a 
matter of fact there are three distinct cities, 
which commonly go under the name of Fiume. 
There is the modern city, with its opera house, 
its handsome official buildings, which is Magyar; 
the elder city, with its narrow, gossiping streets 
and Roman triumphal arch, which is Italian, 
and, finally, just across the canal, or "flume," 
which seems to have given the name to the 
city, is a handsome new Croatian town which is 
officially distinct from the rest of the city, 
having its own mayor and town officials. 

Fiume itself has an exceptional position in 
the Kingdom of Hungary. It is what was 
known in the Middle Ages as a "free city," 
with a governor and representatives in the Hun- 
garian Parliament. The mayor, I understand, 
however, is an Italian, who has married a Croa- 
tian wife. This alliance of two races in one 
family seems to have a certain advantage in 
the rather tumultuous politics of the city, for 
I was told that when the Croatians, as some- 
times happens, go to the mayor's house in pro- 
cession, with their grievances, the mayor's wife 
has been able to help her husband by addressing 
her own people in their native language. 

The most interesting thing I saw in Fiume, 



2 3 o THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

however, was the immense emigration building, 
which has accommodations, as I remember, for 
something like 3,000 emigrants. Here are the 
offices of the Hungarian emigration officials, 
and in this same building are received and 
cared for, until the next succeeding sailing, the 
accumulations of the stream of emigration which 
flows steadily out at this port from every part 
of the kingdom. 

Here the emigrants, after they have been 
medically examined, given a bath and their 
clothes disinfected, are detained until the time 
of embarkation. In company with United 
States Consul Slocum, from whom I received 
much valuable information, I visited the emi- 
gration building and spent a large part of one 
day looking into the arrangements and talking, 
through an interpreter, with emigrants from 
different parts of the country who were waiting 
there to embark. 

Under his guidance I inspected the barracks, 
furnished with rows upon rows of double-decked 
iron beds, observed the machinery for disin- 
fecting the clothing of emigrants, visited the 
kitchen, tasted the soup, and finally saw all 
the different nationalities march in together to 
dinner, the women in one row and the men in 
another. The majority of them were of Mag- 
yar nationality; good, wholesome, sturdy, and 



THE IMMIGRANT 231 

thrifty people they seemed. They were from 
the country districts. Some of them were 
persons of property, who were going to America 
to earn enough money to pay off mortgages 
with which their lands were burdened. Very 
many of them had relatives, a brother, a sister, 
or a husband already in America, and they 
seemed to be very well informed about con- 
ditions in the new country where they were 
going. 

The two most interesting figures that I noticed 
among the intended emigrants were a tall, 
pallid, and barefooted girl, with rather delicate 
and animated features, and a man in a linen 
blouse which hung down to his knees, his 
feet and legs incased in a kind of moccason, 
surmounted with leggings, bound with leather 
thongs. The girl was a Ruthenian, who was 
going to meet relatives in America. The man, 
whom I noticed looking, with what seemed to 
me rather envious interest and curiosity, at a 
pair of American shoes on sale at one of the 
booths in the big common hall, was a Rou- 
manian. 

Two of the emigrants with whom I talked 
had been in America before. One of these, 
who understood a little English, seemed to be 
a leader among the others. When I asked him 
the reason why he was going back to America 



2 3 2 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

he spoke quite frankly and disparagingly about 
conditions in the old country. 

He said it was not so much the wages that 
led people to emigrate, though they were small 
enough. But the worst of it was that there 
were long intervals when it was not possible 
to get any work. Besides that, the taxes were 
high. 

"And then," he added, shrugging his shoul- 
ders and throwing out his arm with a gesture 
of impatience, "it is too tight here." 

I suspect that this expresses the feeling of 
a good many emigrants who, returning to their 
native country, have emigrated a second time. 
They have found things in the old country 
"too tight" for comfort. There is still room in 
America for people to spread out, and grow and 
find out for themselves what they are capable 
of. As long as people find things "too tight" 
they will move on. The plant stretches always 
toward the light. 

Among the emigrants with whom I had an 
opportunity to talk was a group of Roumanians 
who had come up from Transylvania, or Sieben- 
biirgen, as they called it. They were a dark, 
silent sort of people, who hung very closely to- 
gether and looked at us out of the corners of 
their eyes. When I sought to talk with them 
they seemed indisposed to answer my questions, 



THE IMMIGRANT 233 

and finally one of them told the interpreter 
that they had been instructed not to talk with 
any one until they reached America. 

Considering the elaborate regulations which 
their Government has imposed upon people 
seeking to leave Hungary, and the still more 
elaborate regulations which our Government 
has imposed upon people seeking to enter the 
United States, this did not particularly sur- 
prise me. 

Since these people were Roumanians, or 
Wallachs, from Siebenbiirgen, they may have 
had other reasons for not telling why they were 
leaving the country. The Roumanians, al- 
though they proudly claim descent from the 
Roman conquerors of this part of the world, 
are, nevertheless, classed among the " inferior," 
as they are, in fact, among the most ignorant, 
races in Hungary. As they have been partic- 
ularly persistent in advertising their wrongs to 
the rest of Europe, and have been frequently 
punished for it, they may, perhaps, have learned 
that silence is golden, particularly in the pres- 
ence of Magyar officials. 

When in Vienna I was seeking for infor- 
mation that would help me to understand the 
racial situation in the Dual Monarchy, I found 
that one of the most learned and brilliant 
writers on that subject was a Roumanian who, 



234 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

while he was a student in a Roumanian academy 
in 1892, had been arrested with other students 
and condemned to four years' imprisonment 
for writing and circulating a pamphlet in which 
were enumerated "acts of violence" committed 
against the other races of Hungary by the 
"superior" Magyars. 

The superiority of the dominant race seems, 
as a matter of fact, to be the foundation stone 
of the political policy of the present govern- 
ment in Hungary. In the last analysis it seems 
to be the major premise, so to speak, of every 
argument which I happen to have heard or 
read in justification of the policy which the 
Government has pursued in reference to the 
other races of the monarchy. In fact, the 
"superiority of the Magyar" race is responsible 
for most that is good and evil in the history 
of Hungary for the past seventy years. It 
seems, for example, to have been the chief source 
of inspiration for the heroic struggle against 
Austria which began in 1848 and ended with 
the independence of Hungary in 1867. It 
seems, also, to have been the goad which has 
spurred on the impatient leaders of modern 
Hungary in their hurry to overtake and sur- 
pass the progress of civilization in the rest of 
Europe. 

Unfortunately the ambition and success of 



THE IMMIGRANT 235 

the Magyars in their effort to gain their political 
independence and preserve their peculiar racial 
type from being lost and swallowed up by the 
other and "inferior" peoples by whom it is 
surrounded have encouraged every other na- 
tionality in a similar desire and determination. 

"If it is good for the Magyars to preserve 
their language, customs, and racial traditions," 
say the other races, in effect, "why is it not just 
as important for us that we preserve ours?" 

The reply of the Magyars is, in effect: "You 
have no language, no history, no tradition worth 
keeping. In short, you are an inferior race." 

Naturally the argument does not end there. 
The other nationalities reply by founding 
national schools and colleges to study and pre- 
serve their peculiar language, traditions, and 
customs, while these nationalities who have 
previously had no history proceed to make 
some. Thus the doctrine of superiority of the 
Magyar race, which has been so valuable in 
stimulating the Magyars to heroic efforts in 
behalf of their own race, seems to have been 
just as valuable in stinging into life the racial 
pride and loyalty of the other races. And thus, 
on the whole, in spite of its incidental cruelties, 
the conflict of the races in Hungary, like the 
struggle of the white and black races in the 
South, seems to have done less harm than good. 



236 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

At least this is true so far as it concerns the 
races which are down and are struggling up, be- 
cause oppression, which frequently stimulates 
the individual or the race which suffers from it, 
invariably injures most the individual or the race 
which inflicts it. 

Most of the "acts of violence" of which the 
subordinate nations complain are committed 
in the name of what is known as the "Magyar 
State Idea," which seems to be little more, how- 
ever, than the idea that the Magyars must dom- 
inate, although they represent but 51 per cent, 
of the population in Hungary proper and 45 per 
cent, of the total population, including that of 
the annexed territory, Croatia-Slavonia. 

So far is the Magyar race identified with the 
Government in Hungary that it is punished as 
a kind of treason to say anything against the 
Magyars. Most of the persons who are per- 
secuted for political crimes in Hungary seem to 
be charged either with panslavism, which is 
usually little more than a desire of the Slavs 
to preserve their own national existence, or 
with "incitement against the Magyar nation- 
ality." 

On the part of the Magyars it does not seem 
to be any crime to speak disrespectfully, or 
even contemptuously, of the other races. I 
have observed that those writers who have 



THE IMMIGRANT 237 

sought to defend the "Magyar State Idea" 
refer quite frankly to the Roumanians and the 
Slovaks as " inferior races," who are not com- 
petent to govern themselves. 

There is, likewise, a saying among the Magyars 
to the effect that "a Slovak is not a human be- 
ing," a notion that seems to spring up quite 
naturally in the mind of any race which has 
accustomed itself to the slavery and oppression 
of another race. 

It is, however, all the more curious that such 
a saying should gain currency in Hungary in 
view of the fact that Kossuth, the great national 
hero of Hungary, was himself a Slovak. 

One hears strange stories in Hungary of the 
methods which the dominant race has employed 
to hold the other races in subjection. For ex- 
ample, in the matter of elections, bribery, in- 
timidation, and all the other familiar methods 
for exploiting the vote of ignorant and simple- 
minded people are carried on in a manner and 
to an extent which recalls the days of Recon- 
struction in the Southern States. 

In order to maintain the superior race in 
power, newspapers are suppressed, schools are 
closed and the moneys for their support, which 
have been collected for educational purposes, 
are confiscated by the Government. 

As an illustration of the lengths to which 



238 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

Hungary has gone in order to maintain Magyar 
domination, it is said that when the Catholic 
clergy, seeing the ravages which drink had made 
among Slovaks, attempted to organize temper- 
ance societies among them, the Government 
suppressed these organizations on the ground 
that they tended to foster the sentiment of 
panslavism and so were in opposition to the 
"Magyar State Idea." It is known, however, 
that the chief complaints against these societies 
were from liquor dealers. 

Apparently it is just as easy in Hungary as 
in America for selfish persons to take advantage 
of racial predjuice and sentiment in order to 
use it for their own ends. In fact, all that I 
saw and learned in regard to the relation of the 
races in Hungary served to show me that racial 
hatred works in much the same way, whether 
it exists among people of the same colour but 
different speech, or among people of different 
colour and the same speech. 

If there are some points in which the re- 
lations of the races in Hungary and the United 
States are similar, there are others in which 
they differ. While Hungary is seeking to 
solve its racial problem by holding down the 
weaker races and people, America is seeking to 
accomplish the same result by lifting them up. 
In Hungary every effort seems to be made to 



THE IMMIGRANT 239 

compel the so-called "inferior race" to give up 
their separate language, to forget their national 
history, traditions, and civilization — everything, 
in fact, which might inspire them, as a people, 
with a desire or a proper ambition to win for 
themselves a position of respect and considera- 
tion in the civilized world. 

In America, on the contrary, each race and 
nationality is encouraged to cultivate and take 
pride in everything that is distinctive or pe- 
culiar, either in its traditions, racial traits, or 
disposition. I think I am safe in saying that 
there is no country in the world where so many 
different races of such different colours, habits, 
and traditions live together in such peace and 
harmony as is true in the United States. One 
reason for this is that there is no other country 
where "the man farthest down" has more 
opportunity or greater freedom than in the 
United States. 



CHAPTER XIII 

CRACOW AND THE POLISH JEW 

EVER since I can remember I have had a 
special and peculiar interest in the 
history and the progress of the Jewish 
race. The first book that I knew, the Bible, 
was a history of the Jews, and to my childish 
mind the most fascinating portion of that book 
was the story of the manner in which Moses 
led the children of Israel out of the house of 
bondage, through the wilderness, into the 
promised land. I first heard that story from 
the lips of my mother, when both she and I were 
slaves on a plantation in Virginia. I have 
heard it repeated and referred to many times 
since. In fact, I am certain that there is hardly 
a day or a week goes by that I do not meet 
among my people some reference to this same 
Bible story. 

The Negro slaves were always looking for- 
ward to the time when a Moses should arise 
from somewhere who would lead them, as he 
led the ancient Hebrews, out of the house of 
bondage. And after freedom, the masses of 

240 



CRACOW AND THE POLISH JEW 241 

the Negro people have still continued to look 
to some great leader, some man inspired of God, 
who would lead them out of their difficulties 
into the promised land, which, somehow, they 
never seem able to reach. 

As I learned in slavery to compare the condition 
of the Negro with that of the Jews in bondage 
in Egypt, so I have frequently, since freedom, 
been compelled to compare the prejudice, even 
persecution, which the Jewish people have to 
face and overcome in different parts of the 
world with the disadvantages of the Negro in 
the United States and elsewhere. 

I had seen a good deal of the lower classes of 
the Jews in New York City before going to 
Europe, and when I visited Whitechapel, Lon- 
don, I had an opportunity to learn something of 
the condition of the Polish and Russian Jews 
who, driven from their native land, have found 
refuge in England. It was not until I reached 
Cracow, in Austrian Poland, or Galicia, how- 
ever, that I really began to understand what life 
in the Ghetto, of which I had heard so much, 
was really like. It was not until then that I 
began to comprehend what the wear and tear 
of centuries of persecution, poverty, and suffer- 
ing had meant in the life of the Jews. 

One of the first things I observed in regard to 
the Jews abroad was the very different forms 



242 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

which racial prejudice takes in the different 
countries that I visited. For example, in 
East London, which has long been the refuge 
for the poor and oppressed of other countries, 
the Jew is tolerated, although he is not liked. 
It is not clear just what is the source of the 
English prejudice. Complaint is sometimes 
made that the Jewish immigrant has driven out 
the native Briton from certain parts of East 
London, but it is admitted at the same time 
that in such cases it is because the Jew has 
proven a better tenant. He does not drink, he 
is law-abiding, and he pays his rent regularly. 
It seems to be true in London, also, as it is in 
New York, that as soon as the Jewish immigrant 
has made a little success he does not remain in 
the same quarter of the city. He soon moves 
out and his place is taken by some new and half- 
starved fugitive from Russia or Roumania, so 
that there is a constant stream of " greeners," as 
they are called, coming in, and another, per- 
haps somewhat smaller, stream of those who 
have been successful moving out. In spite of this 
fact, it is generally admitted that general con- 
ditions have improved under the influence of 
the Jews. English prejudice where it exists 
seems to be due, therefore, partly to economic 
causes and partly to the general distrust of the 
alien that seems to be gaining in England with 



CRACOW AND THE POLISH JEW 243 

the influx of immigration from southern Europe. 
In Denmark, on the contrary, where the Jews 
seem to be very largely represented among the 
educated and well-to-do classes, I discovered a 
great deal of prejudice against the Germans 
but almost none against the Jews. In fact, 
one of the most distinguished men in Denmark, 
outside of the King, a man who has been a 
leader in the- intellectual life of that country 
during the past thirty years, Prof. Georg 
Brandes, is a Jew. 

In Germany I learned that, while the Jews 
are prominent not only in business but in the 
professions, it was still difficult for them to rise 
in the army or to advance to the position of 
professor in the universities, unless they have 
first been baptized. 

In speaking about this matter to a German 
whom I met at one of the hotels in Vienna, I 
called to mind the name of a distinguished pro- 
fessor whose name I had heard as an instance of 
a Jew gaining a high position in a German uni- 
versity. 

"Oh, well," he replied, "he has been baptized." 

That recalls to my mind a conundrum which 
an acquaintance proposed while we were dis- 
cussing some of the peculiarities of race preju- 
dice in Europe. 

"When is a Jew not a Jew?" he asked. The 



244 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

answer is of course, "When he is a Christian." 
In other words, prejudice in Germany seems 
to be directed only against the Jew who clings 
to his religion. 

When I reached Prague in Bohemia I learned 
that among the masses of the people there is 
little distinction made between Jews and Ger- 
mans, since both speak the same language, and 
the Czechs, confusing the one with the other, 
hate both with a double hatred, first, for what 
they are, and then for what they seem to be. 

In Vienna and Budapest the Jews, through 
the newspapers which they control, seem to 
exercise a powerful influence on politics. I 
remember hearing repeated references while I 
was there to the "Jewish press." In Prague 
it is said that every German paper but one is 
controlled by Jews. Jews are represented, how- 
ever, not only in the press in Austria-Hungary, 
but in the army and in all the other professions. 
They are not only financiers and business men, 
but doctors, lawyers, artists, and actors, as 
elsewhere in Europe where they have gained 
their freedom. Nevertheless it is still against 
the law for Jews and Christians to intermarry 
in Austria-Hungary. 

I have referred at some length to the con- 
dition of the Jews in other parts of Europe where 
they have profited by the social and political 



CRACOW AND THE POLISH JEW 245 

freedom which was granted them in the course 
of the nineteenth century, because their prog- 
ress there is in such striking contrast with their 
condition as I saw it in and around Cracow, 
in Galicia; as it is, also, just across the borders 
of Austria-Hungary, in Russian Poland and 
Roumania, and as it seems to have been in 
other parts of Europe seventy-five or a hundred 
years ago, before the gates of the Ghetto were 
opened and the inhabitants emancipated. 

Some notion of the conditions under which 
the Jews lived, in almost every part of Europe, 
a hundred years ago, may be gathered from the 
restrictions which are imposed upon them to-day 
in Russia and Roumania. In Roumania a Jew 
can neither vote nor hold office in the civil 
service. He is excluded from the professions; 
he is not permitted, for example, to become a 
physician or even open a pharmacy; he is not 
permitted to live in the rural districts; he may 
neither own land outside of the town nor work 
as an agricultural labourer. In the mills and 
factories not more than 25 per cent, of the em- 
ployees may be Jews. Although they are 
practically restricted to business enterprises, 
Jews may not become members of chambers of 
commerce. Jews are bound to serve in the 
army, they pay heavier taxes, proportionately, 
than other portions of the community, but they 



246 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

are classed under the laws as " aliens not sub- 
ject to alien protection." 

In Russia, Jews are not allowed to live out- 
side of what is called the "Pale of Settlement," 
which includes twelve provinces on the western 
and southwestern borders which Russia has 
annexed during the past two hundred years. 
Only merchants who pay a special license of 
i ,000 rubles, or about $500, university gradu- 
ates, and a few others may live outside the 
pale. A Jew is not even permitted to live in 
Siberia unless he has been sent there in punish- 
ment for crime. 

Inside the pale, Jews are not allowed to live 
outside the cities and incorporated towns. Al- 
though Jews are allowed to vote in Russia and 
send representatives to the Duma, they are not 
permitted to hold office or to be employed in the 
public service. They are compelled to pay in 
addition to the ordinary taxes, which are heavy 
enough, taxes on the rents they receive from 
property owned by them, or inheritances, on 
the meat killed according to the Jewish law, 
on candles used in some of their religious ob- 
servances, and on the skull caps they wear dur- 
ing religious services. In spite of this they are 
excluded from hospitals, schools, and public 
functions, which, in the pale, are mainly paid 
for out of the extra taxes imposed upon them. 



CRACOW AND THE POLISH JEW 247 

The most singular thing about it all is that 
the disabilities under which the Russian Jew 
now labours are at once removed by baptism. 
Not only that, but every Jew who allows him- 
self to be sprinkled with holy water, in sign 
of the renunciation of his religion and his people, 
receives thirty rubles, "thirty pieces of silver," 
as a reward. 

The Jews whom I saw in Galicia are not sub- 
ject to any of the medieval restrictions which 
are imposed upon members of their race in 
Russia and Roumania. They enjoy, in fact, 
all the political rights of other races. Never- 
theless, Jews in Galicia are said to be poorer than 
they are in some parts of Russian Poland, al- 
though very much better off than in some parts 
of southern Russia. 

Elsewhere in Europe, where they have had 
their freedom, Jews are as a rule more prosperous 
than the people by whom they are surrounded. 
In Berlin, Germany, for instance, where Jews 
represent 4.88 per cent, of the total population, 
15 per cent, of those who had an income of 
1,500 marks, or more, were Jews. Statistics 
show that similar conditions exist in other 
parts of Europe.* . 

When I asked an acquaintance, who had lived 
a number of years in Austria, why this was so, 

*M. Fishberg, " The Jews," p. 366, 



248 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

he replied that there were so many Jews in 
Galicia that there were not enough other people 
to support them. He then went on to explain 
that between the two classes, the nobility who 
owned the land and the peasant who cultivated 
it, the Jew represented the trader, or middle- 
man. It was, therefore, literally true that there 
were not enough other people in the country to 
support the Jew, who represents, however, not 
more than n per cent, of the total population. 
One of the first persons I met in Galicia was 
a representative of this poorer class of Jews. I 
reached Cracow late one afternoon in the latter 
part of September. There was a cold wind 
blowing and, for the first time since I had left 
Scotland, I noticed an uncomfortable keenness 
in the evening air, which was an indication, I 
suppose, that I was on the northern and eastern 
or the Russian side of the Carpathian Moun- 
tains. One of the first persons I encountered 
as I was standing shivering at the entrance of 
the hotel was a pale-faced, brown-eyed little 
boy, who spoke to me in English and seemed to 
want to establish some sort of friendship with me 
on the basis of our common acquaintance with 
the English language. He was unmistakably 
a Jew and, as we walked down the street to- 
gether, he told me something of his life in Lon- 
don and then in Cracow. I gathered from what 



CRACOW AND THE POLISH JEW 249 

he was able to tell me that his father, who was a 
cabinetmaker and, as he said, "very poor," 
had found it harder to live in the fierce com- 
petition of the London sweatshops, where he 
had been employed, than in the Ghetto at 
Cracow, and so had grown discouraged and re- 
turned. 

I learned from him, as I did later from others 
of his race, that not all the Jews who came to 
England and America succeed and get rich in 
a few years, as seems to be commonly supposed. 
Some of them fail, and some get into unexpected 
troubles, and frequently families who immi- 
grate are broken up and some of them sent back 
as a consequence of the enforcement of the im- 
migration regulations, so that there is not so 
much eagerness to go to America as there was a 
few years ago. 

In spite of this fact the Jews of Galicia, 
nearly every one of whom probably has friends 
or relatives either in England or America, seem 
to look with peculiar interest upon every one 
who speaks the English language, because they 
regard them as representatives of a people who, 
more than any other in the world', have tried 
to be just to the Jews. 

A few days later I met in a little village a few 
miles from Cracow a Jewish trader who, like 
most of the Jews in this part of the country, 



250 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

spoke German as well as Polish, so that with 
the assistance of Doctor Park I was able to 
speak with him. He said that his business was 
to buy grain and fodder from the large land- 
owners in different parts of Galicia and sell it 
again to the peasants, who used it to feed their 
stock. When he learned that I was from Amer- 
ica and that I wanted to see something of the 
life of the peasant people he volunteered to be 
my guide. It was a very fortunate meeting for 
me, for I found that this man not only knew 
about the condition of nearly every family in 
the village, but he understood, also, exactly 
how to deal with them so that, at his touch, 
every door flew open, as if by magic, and I was 
able to see and learn all that I wanted to know. 

In the meantime I noticed that our guide 
and interpreter seemed to be quite as interested 
in learning about America as I was interested 
in getting acquainted with Galicia. He inter- 
larded all his information about the condition 
of the peasants in different parts of the country 
with questions about conditions in America. 
As it turned out, he not only had relatives in 
America, but he had a cousin in New York who 
had got into trouble and been sent to prison 
for three years on account of some business 
irregularity. It was a small matter, according 
to my Jewish friend, that would not have cost 



CRACOW AND THE POLISH JEW 251 

more than eight days' imprisonment in Galicia. 
He could not understand, therefore, how a poor 
man should be treated more harshly in a free 
country like America, where all are equal, than 
he was at home, where he was the under- 
dog and did not expect consideration. What 
seemed to trouble him most, however, was 
the fact that he had not heard from his cousin 
for a year and no one knew what had become 
of him. 

When the matter was explained to me, I told 
the man that if he would give me the name and 
last address of his cousin, when I returned to 
New York I would look the matter up and, if 
possible, learn what had become of the missing 
cousin. 

This seemed to me a very natural proposal, 
under the circumstances, but it evidently took 
the poor man by surprise, for he stopped, stared 
at me an instant, and then in the most humble 
manner knelt down and kissed my hand. I 
confess that at first I was a little shocked and 
rather disgusted. Afterward I learned that it 
is a common habit, more especially in Russia, 
for peasants to kiss the hands and even the feet 
of their superiors. The thought that occurred 
to me, however, was that it must have taken 
many centuries of subjection and oppression to 
make this attitude of humility a familiar and 



252 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

natural way, as it seemed to be in this case, of 
expressing gratitude. 

The singular thing about it all was that this 
Jew who had shown himself so humble toward 
me looked down upon and despised the Polish 
peasants among whom he trades. He referred 
to them as "ignorant and dirty creatures." 
For all that, he seemed to have learned their 
ways of expressing himself to those to whose 
power or influence he looked for help or pro- 
tection. 

Under these circumstances, with these in- 
grained habits in the masses of the people, I 
found it hard to imagine just what the right of 
manhood suffrage, which has recently been con- 
ferred upon the people in all the provinces of 
Austria, was likely to mean in actual practice. 

Nothing was impressed more forcibly upon 
me during my study of conditions in Europe 
than this — namely, that we can tell very little 
from the mere fact that this or that political 
institution exists in a country just what priv- 
ileges or disadvantages these institutions bring 
to the masses of the people. In fact, it seems 
to be just as true in Europe as it is in America, 
that mere legislative enactments can of them- 
selves no more produce justice and freedom 
than they can produce industry and thrift. 
After the physical bondage has been destroyed 



CRACOW AND THE POLISH JEW 253 

there still remains the bondage of superstition; 
of ignorance, and of religious, class, and racial 
prejudice. The act of this Jew in kissing my 
hand was a revelation to me, not only of his 
own state of mind, but of the conditions by 
which he was surrounded. 

I think this one incident, more than anything 
else I saw or heard while I was in Galicia, gave 
me an insight into the life of the people. It 
seemed to me I could understand, for example, 
from this alone, why the Jews have made little 
more progress in Galicia than they have in the 
neighbouring provinces of Roumania and Russia. 

As for my guide, I might add that I never 
fieard from him afterward. If he wrote to me the 
letter never reached me, and I do not know what 
finally became of the cousin whom he had lost. 

Perhaps I ought, before I attempt to describe 
the condition of the poorer class of Jews in 
Cracow, to say something of another Ghetto 
which I saw while in Europe. 

During my stay in Prague I took a walk one 
day through an ancient quarter of the city 
which had been formerly inhabited by Jews. 
The Ghetto of Prague is said to have been the 
largest and most famous in Europe. It was, 
in, fact, a city in itself, for it contained not 
merely the oldest synagogue in Europe, with a 
famous old Jewish burial ground attached to it, 



254 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

but also a Rathhaus, or city hall, and a market 
in which, according to tradition, Jewish traders 
at one time sold Christian slaves. So thor- 
oughly were the Jews at one time established 
in this quarter of the city that it went under the 
name of Judenstadt, or Jewtown. There they 
maintained, in a small way, a separate civil 
government of their own, just as they do, to a 
lesser extent, in Russia to-day. In his book 
on the Jews, already referred to, Mr. M. Fish- 
berg, to whom I am indebted for many facts and 
statistics concerning the condition of the Jew, 
says of the Jews in Russia to-day: 

They speak their own language, Yiddish, and many conduct 
their affairs, keep their ledgers, write contracts, wills, and many 
other documents in this dialect; the registration of births, mar- 
riages, and deaths is done by their rabbis, and the divorces 
granted by them are recognized by the state as valid; in the 
smaller towns they prefer to settle their differences before their 
own judiciary (Beth din), and not in the state courts; they 
collect the greater part of their own taxes for the Government 
in the name of the Jewish community; not only is each individual 
Jew required to do military duty, but the Jewish community as 
a whole is held responsible for delivering annually a certain 
number of recruits. This separateness goes as far as the cal- 
endar with many Jews, who date their letters and documents 
according to the Hebrew and not the Russian calendar. Up 
to about fifty years ago it was a disgrace for a Jew to be able to 
read Russian or German, or even to have in his possession a 
book in one of these vulgar languages; it was a sin next to 
apostasy. But during the last two generations a profound 
change has taken place. 



CRACOW AND THE POLISH JEW 255 

At the time I was in Prague the ancient 
Ghetto was in process of demolition, and it 
illustrates the change which has come in recent 
years that most of the people living in the 
narrow streets and battered ancient buildings 
of the former Ghetto were not Jews but Chris- 
tians. 

After Prague, the city which has the oldest 
and most interesting Ghetto in Europe is 
Cracow, and the most interesting thing about 
it is the fact that it is still inhabited by Jews. 
They live there to-day very much, I suppose, as 
they did a hundred years ago, a race separate 
and apart, more removed, apparently, from the 
manners, customs, and comprehension of the rest 
of the world than any people this side of China. 

I have known Jews nearly all my life. I have 
done business with them and have more than 
once talked to them in their synagogues, and 
have always found sympathy and support 
among them for the work I have had to do for 
my own people. I have frequently visited and 
studied, to some extent, the poorer classes in 
the Jewish quarter on the East Side in New 
York. In spite of this, however, when certain 
strange figures in long black coats, soft felt hats, 
with pale faces, lighted by dark glittering eyes 
and framed by glossy curls which hung down on 
either side in front of their ears, were pointed 



256 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

out to me in Vienna, I had not the slightest 
notion to what race or nationality of people 
they belonged. Later on, when I reached Cra- 
cow, these same slender figures and pale, deli- 
cate faces became very familiar to me, and I 
learned to recognize in them the higher type 
of Polish Jew. 

The great majority of the Jews in Cracow 
still make their homes in a quarter of the city 
called the "Kazimierz," which gets its name 
from that of a Polish king who fell in love with 
a beautiful Jewess some four hundred years ago 
and, for her sake, made Poland a refuge for the 
members of her race, who, at that time, were 
hunted almost like wild beasts in other parts 
of Europe. 

I visited the Kazimierz late one afternoon, 
when the narrow, dirty, and ill-smelling streets 
were swarming with their strange brood of slat- 
ternly, poverty-stricken, and unhealthy looking 
inhabitants. 

I have been through the Jewish quarter in 
New York, with its confusion of pushcarts, its 
swarms of black-eyed children, and its strange 
old men with gray-brown beards wandering 
careworn and absorbed through the crowded 
streets, each anxiously intent on some thought 
or purpose of his own. The Jewish quarter on 
the East Side in New York is, however, a pale 



CRACOW AND THE POLISH JEW 257 

reflection of the Ghetto in Cracow. For one 
thing, the Jew in New York, though he retains 
many of the habits and customs of the country 
from which he came, seems, in most cases, to 
be making an earnest effort to make an American 
of himself; to learn the language, adopt the 
dress and, as far as possible, the manners of the 
new country of which he is soon to become, if he 
is not already, a citizen. 

The masses of the Polish Jews, however, still 
cling tenaciously to the customs of their religion 
and of the Ghetto in which, for a thousand years 
or more, they have lived as exiles and, more or 
less, like prisoners. Instead of seeking to make 
themselves look like the rest of the people 
among whom they live, they seem to be making 
every effort to preserve and emphasize the 
characters in which they are different from the 
people about them. 

Although I met in Cracow Jews in all the vari- 
ous stages of transition — as far as their dress 
is concerned — from the traditional Ghetto 
Jew to the modern literary, professional or busi- 
ness man, nevertheless the majority of the 
Jews still cling to the long black coat which 
they were compelled to wear in the Middle 
Ages. Certain ones have discarded this symbol 
of exclusiveness, but still wear the long beard, 
and the side curls in front of their ears, which 



258 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

seem to be especially dear to them, perhaps, 
because, for some reason I could not understand, 
they are forbidden to wear them in Russia. 

Perhaps it was the effect of the costume, which 
gave them a strange and alien appearance, but 
it seemed to me, at first, as if every Jew in 
Cracow had exactly the same features, the 
same manner of walking, and the same expres- 
sion of countenance. As I watched the different 
figures in the crowded streets more closely, 
however, I discovered that beneath the peculiar 
dress and manner many different types of hu- 
man beings were concealed. There were the 
pale-browed students, who moved through the 
crowd with a hurried and abstracted air; there 
were slender and elegant aristocrats, who, while 
still wearing the uniform of their race, dressed 
with a scrupulous correctness and looked at you 
with an expression which seemed a curious min- 
gling of the humility of the Jew and the scorn 
of the Pharisee. 

There was the commonplace plodding Jew, 
following humbly in the common ruts of barter 
and trade and the daily and weekly routine 
which his religion prescribed. There was the 
outcast beggar, dirty and wretched, doddering 
aimlessly along the dirty street or sitting in 
some doorway, staring disconsolately into the 
street. There was, also, the dirty, glutton- 



CRACOW AND THE POLISH JEW 259 

ous, ignorant, and brutal type, on whom 
neither suffering nor fanaticism seemed to have 
made any impression, and who, in his Jewish 
dress and manners, looked like a caricature of 
his more high-bred neighbour. 

I visited the ancient synagogue while I was 
in Cracow, which they say was built for the Jews 
by that same Polish king, Kazimierz, who first 
invited them to take refuge in his country. I 
saw there the ancient Roll of the Laws and ancient 
Prayer Book which were brought from Spain 
when the Jews were expelled from that country. 

Nearby the synagogue is the ancient Jewish 
market. A narrow street leads into an open 
square in the centre of which is a circular build- 
ing. Before one of the entrances of this build- 
ing a man, with the pale brow and delicate 
features which seem to be a mark of superiority 
among the people of the Ghetto, was publicly 
slaughtering geese. The square in which this 
building stood was surrounded on all sides by 
rows of little market booths, in front of which 
groups of men and women were dickering and 
trading for various small wares. A crowd of 
women stood about the building in the centre 
of the square and watched the pale-browed man, 
who did not seem to relish the job, as he rapidly 
and dexterously performed the ceremony of 
cutting the throats of the geese. These were 



2 6o THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

handed to him by a good-natured looking 
woman, wearing an apron and high boots, red 
with blood. After the geese were killed they 
were hung over a pit to drain, while fresh vic- 
tims were brought from the baskets and crates 
standing about in the open square. A foul 
smell from the open pit in which the geese were 
allowed to bleed filled the square. This did not 
add to the dignity of the proceedings, but it 
served to impress them upon my memory. 

In one corner of the square I noticed a dull 
gray-coloured building from which troops of 
little Jewish children were issuing. It was one 
of those schools by means of which Jewish 
teachers, through all the persecutions and dis- 
persions of nineteen centuries, have kept alive 
the memory of the Jewish history and the Jew- 
ish law and so kept the race together. I do not 
think I know of anything which so illustrates 
and emphasizes the power of education as the 
influences which these schools have had upon 
the Jewish people. 

I was interested in all that I saw of the life 
of the Jew in Cracow, because it gave me some 
idea of the poverty, degradation, and squalor 
in which more than half of the Jewish race is 
living to-day in different parts of Europe. Of 
the twelve million Jews in the world, about 
nine millions live in Europe, Of this number 



CRACOW AND THE POLISH JEW 261 

more than six million live in Russia and nearly 
two million and a half in Austria, Roumania, and 
the other parts of southeastern Europe. I have 
given some idea of the poverty of the Jews in 
Galicia, where they are politically free. From 
all that I can learn the Jews in Russia and 
Roumania are very much worse off than they 
are in the Austrian province of Galicia. Most 
of us, who are acquainted with Jews only in 
America or in western Europe, have been led 
to believe, in spite of the evident poverty of 
many of the Jews who live on the East Side in 
New York and in the Whitechapel district of 
London, that, as a race, the Jews are extremely 
wealthy. I was surprised, therefore, to read 
recently the statement, made by Jews who 
have investigated the condition of their own 
people, to the effect that, while they are un- 
deniably wealthier than their Christian neigh- 
bours in the countries in which, during the past 
hundred years, they have been granted their 
freedom, taking the Jews as a whole they are 
poorer than any other civilized nation in the 
world. In short, one writer has said: "If we 
were to capitalize their wealth and distribute 
it among the twelve millions of Jews they would 
dispute with any poor nation for the lowest 
place in the scale of wealth."* 

*M. Fishberg, "The Jews: A Study of Race and Environment," p. 361. 



262 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

The direction in which the Jews seem to be 
superior to all of the rest of the world is ap- 
parently not in wealth but in education. Even 
in Russia, where they do not have the same 
educational advantages that are given to the 
rest of the population, it is found that, while 
79 per cent, of the total population can neither 
read nor write, the percentage of illiteracy 
among the Jews is 61 per cent, which is 18 per 
cent, less than that of the rest of the population. 

In western Europe, where Jews have equal 
opportunities with their Gentile neighbours in 
the matter of education, they are far in ad- 
vance of them in education. Statistics for 
Cracow show, for example, that while only a 
little more than 2 per cent, of the Jews who 
applied for marriage licenses were unable to read 
and write, between 15 and 20 per cent, of the 
Christians in the same category were illiterate. 
In Italy, where 42.6 per cent, of the men and 
57 per cent, of the women of the Christian pop- 
ulation over fifteen years of age are unable to 
read and write, only 3 per cent, of the men and 
7.5 per cent, of the women among the Jews are 
illiterate. 

In Austria over 25 per cent, of the students 
of the universities are Jews, although they 
represent only 5 per cent, of the population. 
In Hungary, where Jews represent 4.9 per cent. 



CRACOW AND THE POLISH JEW 263 

of the population, they furnish 30.27 per cent, 
of the students in the universities and other 
schools of higher education. In Baden, Ger- 
many, Jews have proportionately three and a 
half times as many students as the Christians. 
Since 1 85 1 the number of Jewish students in 
Austrian universities has increased more than 
sevenfold, while the number of Christian students 
has scarcely more than trebled in that time. 

One reason for this is that the Jews have al- 
most invariably made their homes in the cities, 
where the opportunities for education existed. 
They have, at the same time, been almost 
wholly engaged in business, which not only 
requires a certain amount of education, but is 
in itself, more than other occupations, a source 
of education. 

The name rabbi, or teacher, has always been 
a title of respect and honour among the Jews 
from the earliest time. It was the name that 
his disciples bestowed upon Jesus. 

If there were no other reasons why the story 
of the Jew should be studied, it would be inter- 
esting and inspiring as showing what education 
can do and has done for a people who, in the 
face of prejudice and persecution, have pa- 
tiently struggled up to a position of power and 
preeminence in the life and civilization in which 
all races are now beginning to share. 



CHAPTER XIV 

A POLISH VILLAGE IN THE MOUNTAINS 

IT WAS a Jewish trader who advised me 
to visit Jedlovka. He ; said that I 
would see the peasants living there now 
as they had lived for hundreds of years — in the 
simplest and most primitive fashion. 

Jedlovka, I found, is a little straggling vil- 
lage in the foothills of the Carpathians — the 
mountains which divide Galicia from Hungary. 
In order to reach the village it was necessary to 
take the train at Cracow and ride for an hour 
or more in the direction of Lemberg, which is 
the Ruthenian, just as Cracow is the Polish, 
metropolis of Galicia. 

At a place called Turnow we changed cars 
and continued our journey in a direction at 
right angles to that in which we previously 
travelled. It was another hour's ride by train 
to the foothills of the mountain. At Tuchow, 
at the point where the railway, running south- 
ward, plunges into the mountain, we disem- 
barked again and continued our journey by 
wagon. The road led up out of the broad plain 

264 






A POLISH VILLAGE 265 

through which we had been travelling, into a 
narrow and sombre little valley. At the end 
of this valley there is a little wayside inn. 
Higher up, where the road, winding up out of 
the valley, leads out into a high, clear space 
at what seemed to be the top of the mountain, 
there is a church, and this tavern and the church, 
together with a few scattering log huts, were the 
village of Jedlovka and the end of our journey. 

I had had a vague sort of notion that some- 
where in this remote region I should meet 
peasants wearing sheepskin jackets, sandals, 
and leggings bound with thongs, driving their 
herds to pasture. I even had a wild hope that 
I should come upon some rustic festival, such as 
I had read about, where the young men and 
women would dance upon the greensward, to 
the music of shepherds' pipes. As a matter 
of fact, it chanced that our visit did fall upon a 
feast day, but there were no shepherds and no 
dances. What I saw was a crowd of women 
pouring out of the little church, high upon the 
hill, and crowds of drunken men carousing at 
the tavern below. 

Before I proceed to tell what I learned of the 
peasant life in this mountain country, however, 
I want to refer to one feature of Polish life 
which was impressed upon me by what I saw 
on the way. 



266 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

I have referred in the preceding chapter to 
the position which the Jew occupies in the eco- 
nomic organization of Polish life. He is the 
middleman and has the trade of the country 



very largely in his hands. I was particularly 
impressed with this fact by what I saw in the 
course of this journey. Although the Jews 
represent only about 13 per cent, of the popu- 
lation of Galicia, I am certain that more than 
half of the people on the train on which we 
travelled were people of that race. There were 
Jews of all descriptions and in all stages of 
evolution, from the poor, patient pedler, wear- 
ing the garb of the Ghetto, to the wealthy 
banker or merchant fastidiously dressed in the 
latest European fashion. When we left the 
train at Tuchow it was a Jewish horse trader 
who drove us in his improvised coach the re- 
mainder of our journey into the mountains. A 
restaurant at which we stopped to get something 
to eat on our return was conducted by a Jew. 
Halfway to our destination we passed a tumble- 
down cottage, close to the roadside, with a few 
trinkets in the window and some skins hanging 
from the beam which ran along the front of the 
building. We stopped and spoke to an ancient 
man with a long white beard, who lives there. 
He, also, was a Jewish trader. As I recall, he 
was engaged in buying skins from the peasants, 



A POLISH VILLAGE 267 

paying them in the junk which I noticed dis- 
played in the window. When we reached the 
tavern at the end of our journey it turned out 
that the man who ran the tavern was a Jew. 
Apparently wherever in Poland money changes 
hands a Jew is always there to take charge of it. 
In fact, it seemed to me that the Jew in Poland 
was almost like the money he handled, a sort 
of medium of exchange. 

It was a very curious conveyance in which we 
made the last stage of our journey into the 
mountains. Instead of the droske we had ex- 
pected to meet at the station we found what, 
under ordinary circumstances, would have been 
a farmer's wagon, I suppose, although it was 
an altogether different sort of farmer's wagon 
from any I had ever seen in America. The 
frame of this vehicle was something like a great 
long basket, narrow at the bottom, where it sat 
upon the axles, and wider at the top. *The rim 
of this basket was made of poles, about the size 
of a fence rail, and this rim was supported upon 
the frame, which rested on the wagon, by little 
poles or pickets fastened in the frame below and 
the rim above, like a fence paling. The frame 
was so formed that it might have served the pur- 
pose either of a hayrick or a carryall. In this 
case it had been converted into a sort of coach 
or omnibus, with hanging seats, supported with 



268 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

leather straps from the rim. Arranged in this 
way this farmer's wagon was a not inconvenient 
mode of travel, and, driving through the fresh 
green country, dotted with quaint, little moss- 
covered cottages which seemed as much a part 
of the landscape as if they had grown there, the 
journey was made very pleasantly. 

The houses in this part of the country were, 
for the most part, smaller, more weather-worn 
and decrepit, than those I had seen in other 
parts of Galicia. In fact, in some cases 
the green-thatched roofs were so old, so over- 
grown with vegetation, and the little white- 
washed frames of the buildings that supported 
them had so sunken into the soil, that some of 
them looked like gigantic toadstools. As the 
day we visited this part of the country was a 
holiday, we met along the way many of the 
peasants, dressed in the quaint and picturesque 
garb of the country, passing in groups of two 
or three along the road. 

I had before this visited a number of the peas- 
ant houses and was familiar with the plan and 
arrangement of them. The interior of these 
houses is usually divided into two rooms, sepa- 
rated in most cases by an entrance or hallway. 
In one of these rooms the whole family, con- 
sisting of the parents and perhaps five or six 
children, live, eat, and sleep. In this room there 



A POLISH VILLAGE 269 

is usually a very large brick or stone oven which, 
on the cold winter nights, I learned, frequently 
serves the purpose of a bed. In the other 
room are the cows, pigs, geese, chickens. If 
the farmer is well-to-do he will have a number 
of buildings arranged in a hollow square having 
a goose pond in the centre and, in that case, 
the servants will very likely sleep in the straw 
in the barns with the cattle. I can give a more 
vivid notion of some of these houses by quoting 
a few lines from the notes jotted down by 
Doctor Park at the time of our visit: 

To-day, for the first time, we visited some of the peasant houses 
in a little village about three or four miles from Cracow. It was 
difficult at first to make friends with the people. After a time it 
transpired that they were afraid that, although we were evidently 
foreigners, we might be Government officials of some sort. 
This is, perhaps, not strange, since there are many races in this 
country and most of them are "foreigners" to each other. Our 
guide says the people fear the country will be some day handed 
over to Russia. We got on better when the people learned we 
were Americans. 

Every window of the little cottages we passed was crowded 
with laughing, curious children, with pink faces and white teeth. 
We visited the home of a widow with ten "yokes" of land and 
two cows. The cows give fifteen litres of milk a day, which is 
about ten quarts. The woman carries this to the market in 
Cracow every day. In the narrow little kitchen the children 
were all lined up in a row against the wall as we entered. One of 
them darted forward suddently to kiss my hand. Mother and 
children were barefoot. The cow is across the hall from the 
kitchen. These two rooms, the kitchen and the cow-stall, are 
all there is to the house. I discovered what the duck pond in 



2 7 o THE MAX FARTHEST DOWN 

front of the house is for. The woman was filling it with straw 
to make manure. 

One of the leading men in the village has a brand-new house 
made of logs. The logs were neatly squared and the chinks 
between them carefully plastered and painted. The house had 
three rooms, besides a storeroom and cow-stall. I counted 
three barns in the court, besides three outdoor cellars, one for 
the milk and the others for the storing of vegetables. To my 
question as to what the farmer did in the v, inter our guide re- 
plied, "Nothing. When they want money they go to the hole 
where the potatoes and turnips are buried and carry a load to 
the town.'"' The owner of this house was very proud of his new 
place and showed one room in which were several huge chests, 
decorated and stained in bright vermilion in the peculiar style of 
peasant art. These chests were filled with clothes — peasant 
costumes of very handsome material, very beautifully em- 
broidered and decorated. The principal ornament of the cos- 
tume shown us was a belt studded with brass nails with broad 
leather clasps, as large as a small platter, behind and in front. 
It must have occupied the hours of a good many long winter 
evenings to make the garments this man had stowed away in 
these chests. Although there was plenty of room in this house, 
it is evident that the family lives almost wholly in the one large 
living-room. 

The houses I visited in the mountain were 
constructed on the same plan as those de- 
scribed, except sometimes there was only one 
room for the whole family, including the cow, 
the chickens, and the rest of the animals. It 
is very cold on the north side of the mountains 
in winter, and the peasants and cattle frequently 
live in the same room to keep warm. 

In one of the little huts which I ventured to 



A POLISH VILLAGE 271 

enter I found two old women lying down, ap- 
parently asleep, on a heap of straw, while a cow 
standing nearby them was peacefully chewing 
her cud, and several chickens were busily scratch- 
ing among the straw on the earth floor. As there 
was almost no ventilation the air in some of these 
houses was almost indescribable. 

It was in this part of the country, in the vi- 
cinity of the village tavern, that I found people 
who were poor, even by the very moderate 
standard of comfort that prevails in rural Po- 
land. We passed on the drive up the valley a 
number of little huddling straw-thatched huts. 
One of these, which did not seem to be inhab- 
ited, I determined to explore. The building was 
of the prevailing type, with the cowshed in one 
end and the living-room in the other, but the 
thatch was no longer green, and age had im- 
parted to the whole of the outside of the building 
a very dismal, weather-worn appearance. The 
windows were evidently of skins, of the same 
brown colour as the building itself. The en- 
trance was through what would evidently have 
been the cowshed, but this was empty. The 
door into the living-room was open, and, as I 
entered, I saw at first only a cow tied to a 
manger. At the other end of the room, hover- 
ing about a little stone hearth, on which a 
little fire of twigs burned, were an old man and 



272 THE MAX FARTHEST DOWN 

woman. As is frequently the case in many parts 
of Poland, there was no chimney, and the rafters 
of the house were deeply incrusted with the 
smoke which had accumulated in the peak of 
the roof and filtered out through the thatch or 
through an opening at the end of the building. 
The old people seemed very poor and helpless 
and, as I was about to leave the room, the)' held 
out their hands and begged for alms. I should 
like to have stayed and talked with them, but 
unfortunately I had no one with me at the time 
who was able to speak the Polish language. 

As I learned that a number of people had gone 
to America from this valley I suspected that 
these old people were some of those who had 
been left behind and perhaps forgotten by the 
younger generation who had gone across the 
seas. I made some attempt later to learn if 
my suspicions were well founded, but no one 
whom I afterward met seemed to know anything 
about the history of the old people. 

The wealthiest landlord in the vicinity was, as 
I learned, a Polish priest, who owned four dif- 
ferent farms, and most of the people in the 
neighbourhood seemed to be his tenants. He 
lived in a big, bare, rambling house, surrounded 
by great barns filled with cattle and produce of 
various kinds. I stopped to call at this house, 
thinking that I might learn something from him 



A POLISH VILLAGE 273 

about the poor people I have referred to, but the 
good priest was not at home and the people 
whom I found at this house did not seem to be 
able to tell me anything. 

The tavern, which was a long, low log struc- 
ture, built on the same general plan as the 
houses in the village, was crowded with revellers 
and steaming with the fumes of beer. Men 
were standing about, swinging their arms and 
shouting at each other at the top of their lungs, 
and almost every one of them was drunk. 
Several of the men present, including the pro- 
prietor, had been, as I learned, in America. 
One of them, who could speak a few words of 
English, gave us an especially hearty welcome. 
Some of the money which pours into Poland 
from America had reached even this remote 
corner of the country, it seemed. 

I asked the proprietor, who had lived in 
Newark, N. J., for a time and spoke a little 
English, whether he liked this part of the world 
better than America. 

"It is easier to live here," he said. Then 
added, "when you have a little money." 

"But when you haven't any money?" I sug- 
gested. He shrugged his shoulders. "Then 
go to America," he said. 

He told me a good deal of land had been 
purchased in this part of the country with money 



274 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

earned in America. Land was worth from 500 
to 1,000 guilder per "yoke," which is about 
#100 to $200 per acre, a very large sum in a 
country where wages are, perhaps, not more 
than 25 or 50 cents a day. 

At nightfall we returned to Tuchow, which 
appeared to be a typical market town. The 
town is arranged, like many of our country 
villages in the South, around a large open square. 
In the centre of this square is a great covered 
well, from which the town draws its water. 
Four pumps, with long twisted iron handles, 
arranged in a circle about the well, serve to 
draw the water to the surface. Around the 
four corners of this square are the tradesmen's 
shops, most of them with low, thatched roofs 
projecting over the sidewalk to form a cover 
for the walk in front of the shops, and frequently 
supported, on the side toward the street, by 
curiously carved wooden posts. The little shops 
were not more than six or eight feet wide. 
There was usually one little room in front which 
was for the store, and another little room back 
in which the shopkeeper lived. As the ceilings 
were usually very low and the windows under the 
wide projecting roofs were very small, it made 
everything appear very snug and tight, some- 
what as if every building were holding on to 
all that it contained with both arms. 



A POLISH VILLAGE 275 

It all looked very interesting but very quaint 
and old-fashioned. I noticed, however, that 
there were one or two new brick buildings in the 
town, and xhe evening we arrived every one 
was in great excitement over the installation 
in the public square of two new electric lights, 
the first, I suspect, that had been seen in that 
part of the country. It was evident that in 
spite of the apparent solidity and antiquity that 
things were changing here as elsewhere. 



CHAPTER XV 

A RUSSIAN BORDER VILLAGE 

OF THE three former capitals of Poland 
the city of Cracow, the last of Polish 
territory to lose its independence, is 
now an Austrian fortress. One day, shortly 
after my arrival, I was driving in the suburbs 
of the city when my attention was directed to 
a number of low, grass-covered mounds scat- 
tered about at regular intervals in the level 
plain outside the city. To all appearances these 
mounds were nothing more than slight ele- 
vations of land sinking, in a direction away from 
the city, almost imperceptibly into the sur- 
rounding landscape. In all probability, if it 
had not been for a certain regularity in the 
positions which they occupied, I should not 
have noticed them. I had never seen a modern 
fortified city and I was therefore considerably 
surprised when I learned that these gentle ele- 
vations were fortifications and that beneath 
these grass-grown mounds enormous guns were 
concealed, powerful enough to keep a vast 
army at bay. These facts served to remind me 

276 



A RUSSIAN BORDER VILLAGE 277 

that Cracow was a border city, guarding a 
frontier which divides, not merely two European 
countries, but two civilizations — I might al- 
most say, two worlds. Cracow is, as a matter of 
fact, ten miles from the Russian frontier, and, 
although the people in Russian Poland are of 
the same race or nationality as those who live 
in the Austrian province of Galicia, speaking 
the same language and sharing the same tra- 
ditions, the line which divides them marks the 
limits of free government in Europe. 

Now, there were several things that made 
this frontier, where eastern and western Europe 
meet, peculiarly interesting to me. In the first 
place, I knew that thousands of people, most of 
them Poles and Jews, who were unwilling or 
unable to pay the high tax which Russia im- 
poses upon its emigrants, were every year 
smuggled across that border in order to embark 
at some German or Austrian port for America. 
I knew at the same time that Jews and, to a 
lesser extent, perhaps, Poles, outside of Russia 
were making use of this same underground rail- 
way to send back, in return for the emigrants 
who came out, another kind of contraband — 
namely, books and bombs. In fact, I had 
heard that a few years ago, when Russian 
Poland was all aflame with civil war, it was 
from Cracow that the Jews, who were the 



278 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

leading spirits in that movement, directed the 
revolution. 

Naturally all this served to increase my 
natural curiosity in this border country. So it 
was that one cool, clear day in September I 
rented a little droske for the day and started, 
in company with my companion, Doctor Park, 
for the Russian border. 

We drove leisurely along a splendid military 
road, between broad fields, in which peasants 
were gathering, in the cool autumn sunlight, 
the last fruits of the summer's harvest. A 
country road in Galicia, as is true in almost 
any part of Europe, is a good deal more of a 
highway than a country road in most parts of 
America. One meets all sorts of travellers. 
We passed, for example, just beyond the limits 
of the city, a troop of soldiers, with the raw 
look of recruits — red-faced country boys they 
seemed, for the most, bulging out of their 
military suits and trudging along the dusty 
road with an awkward effort at the military 
precision and order of veterans. Now and 
then we passed a barefoot peasant woman, 
tramping briskly to or from the city, with a 
basket on her head or a milk can thrown over 
her shoulder. 

Once we stopped to watch a group of women 
and girls threshing. One woman was pitch- 



A RUSSIAN BORDER VILLAGE 279 

ing down sheaves of rye from the barn loft, 
another was feeding them to the machine, and 
all were in high glee at the wonderful way, as it 
seemed to them, in which this new invention 
separated the grain from the chaff. They were 
so proud of this little machine that, when we 
stopped and showed our interest in what they 
were doing, they insisted on showing us how it 
worked, and took pains to explain the advan- 
tages over the old-fashioned flail. There was a 
man sitting on a beam outside the barn smoking 
a pipe, but the women were doing the work. 

On this same journey we stopped at a little 
straggling village and spent an hour or two visit- 
ing the homes of the people. We saw the house 
of the richest peasant in the village, who owned 
and farmed something like a hundred acres of 
land, as I remember; and then we visited the 
home of the poorest man in the community, who 
lived in a little thatch-roofed cottage of two 
rooms; one of these was just large enough to 
hold a cow, but there was no cow there. The 
other room, although it was neat and clean, 
was not much larger than the cow-stall, and in 
this room this poor old man and his daughter 
lived. Incidentally, in the course of our tramp 
about the village, Doctor Park managed to pick 
up something of the family histories of the 
people and not a little of the current gossip in 



280 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

the community, and all this aided me in getting 
an insight, such as I had not been able to get 
elsewhere, into the daily life and human interests 
of this little rural community, 

At one point along the road we stopped for 
a few minutes at a wayside tavern. It was a 
log structure, with one great, long, low, desolate 
room, in one corner of which was a bar at which 
a sour-faced woman presided. Two or three 
men were lounging about on the benches in 
different parts of the room, but here again the 
woman was doing the work. 

Every mile or two it seemed to me we met a 
wagon piled high with great bulging bags as 
large as bed ticks. In each case these wagons 
were driven by a little shrewd-faced Jew, 
These wagons, as I learned, had come that 
morning from Russia and the loads they carried 
were goose feathers. 

A little farther on we came up with a foot 
passenger who was making toward the border 
with great strides. He turned out to be a Jew, 
a tall, erect figure, with the customary round, 
flat hat and the long black coat which dis- 
tinguish the Polish Jew. Our driver informed 
us, however, that he was a Russian Jew, and 
pointed out the absence of the side curls as 
indicating that fact. Although this man had 
the outward appearance, the manner, and the 



A RUSSIAN BORDER VILLAGE 281 

dress of the Jews whom I had seen in Cracow, 
there was something in the vigorous and erect 
carriage that impressed me to such an extent 
that I suggested that we stop and talk with him. 
As we were already near the border, and he 
was evidently from Russia, I suggested that 
Doctor Park show him our passports and ask 
him if they would let us into Russia. 

He stopped abruptly as we spoke to him, 
and turned his black, piercing eyes upon us. 
Without saying a word he took the passports, 
glanced them through rapidly, tapped them 
with the back of his hand, and handed them 
back to us. 

"That is no passport," he said, and then he 
added, "it should have the vise of your consul." 

Having said this much he turned abruptly, 
without waiting for further conversation, and 
strode on. We soon came up with and passed 
him, but he did not look up. A little later 
we halted at the border. I looked around to 
see what had become of our wandering Jew, 
but he had disappeared. Perhaps he had 
stopped at the inn, and perhaps he had his own 
way of crossing the border. 

I was reminded of this strange figure a few 
months later when I noticed in one of the 
London papers a telegram from Vienna to the 
effect that some thirty persons had been ar- 



282 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

rested at Cracow who were suspected of being 
the ringleaders "in what is believed to be a 
widespread revolutionary organization of Rus- 
sian refugees." The report added that "a 
whole wagon-load of Mannliches rifles, Brown- 
ing pistols, and dynamite grenades, together 
with a large number of compromising documents 
and plans of military works, were siezed as a 
result of searches by the police in the houses of 
the arrested men." 

I had frequently seen reports like this in the 
newspapers before this time, but they had a new 
significance for me now that I had visited the 
border country where this commerce with what 
has been called the " Underground" or " Rev- 
olutionary" Russia was part of the daily ex- 
perience of the people. It all recalled to my 
mind the stories I had heard, when I was a boy, 
from my mother's lips of the American Under- 
ground Railway and the adventures of the run- 
away slaves in their efforts to cross the border 
between the free and slave states. It reminded 
me, also, of the wilder and 'more desperate 
struggles, of which we used to hear whispers in 
slavery time, when the slaves sought to gain 
their freedom by means of insurrection. That 
was a time when, in the Southern States, no 
matter how good the relations between the 
individual master and his slaves, each race 



A RUSSIAN BORDER VILLAGE 283 

lived in constant fear of the other. It is in this 
condition, so far as I can learn, that a great 
part of the people in Russia are living to-day, 
for it is fatally true that no community can live 
without fear in which one portion of the peo- 
ple seeks to govern the other portion through 
terror. 

The Austrian and Russian border at Barany, 
the village at which we had now arrived, is 
not imposing. A wire fence, and a gate such 
as is sometimes used to guard a railway cross- 
ing, are all that separate one country from the 
other. On one side of this gate I noticed a 
little sentinel's box, marked in broad stripes, 
with the Austrian colours, and at the other end 
of the gate there was a similar little box marked 
in broad stripes, with the Russian colours. On 
the Austrian side there was a large building for 
the use of the customs officials. On the Russian 
side there was a similar building with the 
addition of a large compound. In this com- 
pound there were about twenty Russian soldiers, 
standing idly about, with their horses saddled 
and bridled. The reason for the presence of the 
soldiers on the Russian side of the border was due 
to the fact that it is the business of the customs 
officers not merely to collect the tolls on the 
commerce that crosses the border at this point, 
but to prevent any one entering or leaving the 



284 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

country. As Russia imposes an almost pro- 
hibitive tax on emigration, most of the Russian 
emigrants are smuggled across the border. 

At the same time it is necessary to closely 
guard the frontier in order to prevent, as I have 
said, the importation of books and bombs, the 
two elements in western civilization of which 
Russia seems to stand most in fear. 

Leaving our droske on the Austrian side of 
the boundary, Doctor Park and myself applied 
at the gate between the two countries. A big, 
good-natured Russian official grinned, but shook 
his head and indicated that we could not be 
allowed to cross over. Our driver spoke to him 
in Polish, but he did not understand, or pre- 
tended he did not. Then we found a man 
who could speak Russian as well as German, 
and through him we explained that we merely 
wanted to visit the town and be able to say 
that we had at least touched Russian soil. On 
this the man permitted us to go up to the cus- 
toms office and make our request there. At 
the customs office we tried to look as harmless 
as possible, and, with the aid of the interpreter 
we had brought with us, I explained what we 
wanted. 

At the customs office every one was polite, 
good-humoured, and apparently quite as much 
interested in us as we were in them. I was told, 



A RUSSIAN BORDER VILLAGE 285 

however, that I should have to wait until a 
certain higher and more important personage 
arrived. In the course of half an hour the more 
important personage appeared. He looked us 
over carefully, listened to the explanations of his 
subordinates, and then, smiling good-naturedly, 
gave us permission to look about the village. 
With this gracious permission we started out. 

The first thing I noticed was that the smooth, 
hard road upon which we had travelled from 
Cracow to the frontier broke off abruptly 
on the Russian side of the border. The road 
through the village was full of ruts and mudholes 
and the mournful and mud-bedraggled teams 
which were standing near the gate, waiting to 
cross the border, showed only too plainly the 
difficulties of travel in the country through 
which they had passed. Now I had learned in 
Europe that roads are a pretty good index of 
the character of the governments that maintain 
them, so that it was not difficult to see at the 
outset that the Russians were very poor house- 
keepers, so to speak, at least as compared with 
their Austrian neighbours. This was evidently 
not due to a lack of men and officials to do the 
work. Counting the civil officials and the 
soldiers, I suppose there must have been some- 
where between twenty and thirty persons, and 
perhaps more, stationed at this little border 



286 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

village, to collect the toll on the petty traffic 
that crossed at this point. They were, however, 
but part of the vast army of officials and soldiers 
which the Russian Empire maintains along its 
western border from the Baltic to the Black 
Sea, to keep the watch between the east and 
the west; to halt, inspect, and tax, not merely 
the ordinary traffic, but the interchange of 
sentiments and ideas. 

I could not help thinking how much more 
profitable it would be if these soldiers, clerks, 
and officials, and the vast army of frontiersmen 
to which they belonged, could be employed, for 
example, in building roads rather than maintain- 
ing fences; in making commerce easier, opening 
the way to civilization, rather than shutting 
it out. 

Indeed it was no longer strange that, with all 
the vast resources which Russia possesses, the 
masses of the people have made so little prog- 
ress when I considered how large a portion of 
the population had no other task than that of 
holding the people down, hindering rather than 
inspiring and directing the efforts of the masses 
to rise. 

I had not gone far on our stroll about the 
village before I discovered that the Pole who 
so kindly volunteered to help us was a man of 
more than ordinary intelligence. He had seen 



A RUSSIAN BORDER VILLAGE 287 

something of the world, and I found his rather 
gossipy comments on the character of the 
different individuals we met, and upon the 
habits of the people generally in the village, not 
only entertaining but instructive. He had, for 
example, a very frank contempt for what he 
called the stupidity of the officials on both sides 
of the border, and it was clear he was no lover 
of the soldiers and the Government. At one 
time, as we started down a side street, he said: 
"There's a gendarme down there. He is just 
like one of those stupid, faithful watch-dogs that 
bristle up and bark at every person that passes. 
You will see presently. He will come puffing 
up the street to halt you and turn you back." 

"What shall we do when we meet him?" I 
asked. 

"Oh, there's nothing to do but go back if 
he says so, but you will, perhaps, be interested 
to observe the way he behaves. " 

Presently we noticed a soldier clambering 
hastily over an adjoining fence, and in a few 
minutes he had come up with us, his face all 
screwed up in an expression of alarmed surprise. 

"This is the gendarme I was telling you 
about," said our guide quietly, and continued 
speaking about the man just as if he were not 
present. 

As we were not able to talk with this soldier 



288 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

ourselves, and as he did not look very promising 
in any case, we strolled leisurely back while our 
guide entered into a long explanation of who 
and what we were. I imagine that he must 
have put a good deal of varnish on his story, 
for I noticed that, as the soldier glanced at us 
from time to time, his eyes began getting bigger 
and bigger, and his mouth opened wider and 
wider, until he stared at us in a stupid, awe- 
struck way. Finally the interpreter announced 
that the gendarme had come to the conclusion 
that we might go down the road as far as we 
wanted to, only he would be obliged to ac- 
company us to see that we did not break the 
peace in any way. 

Under the direction of our self-appointed 
guide we visited a dusty, musty little bar-room, 
which seemed to be the centre of such life as 
existed in the Aallage. We found a few young 
country boys lolling about on benches, and the 
usual shrewish, sharp-faced, overworked woman, 
who grumblingly left her housework to inquire 
what we wanted. 

The contents of the bar itself consisted of rows 
of little bottles of different coloured liquors, 
interspersed with packages of cigarettes, all 
of them made and sold under the supervision 
of the Government. I purchased one of these 
little bottles of vodka, as it is called, because I 



A RUSSIAN BORDER VILLAGE 289 

wanted to see what it was the Government gave 
the peasants to drink. It was a white, colour- 
less liquid, which looked like raw alcohol and 
was, in fact, as I afterward learned, largely, 
if not wholly, what the chemists call " methy- 
lated spirits, " or wood alcohol. 

We visited one of the little peasant houses 
in the neighbourhood of the customs office. 
It was a little, low log hut with a duck pond 
in front of the doorway and a cow-pen at right 
angles to the house. There were two rooms, 
a bedroom and a kitchen. In the kitchen, which 
had an earthen floor, three or four or five mem- 
bers of the family were sitting on stools, gathered 
about a large bowl, into which each was dipping 
his or her spoon. The bedroom was a neat little 
room, containing a high bed, a highly decorated 
chest of drawers, and was filled with curious 
bits of the rustic art, including among other 
things several religious pictures and images. 

Although everything in this house was very 
simple and primitive, there was about it an air 
of self-respecting thrift and neatness that showed 
that the family which lived here was relatively 
prosperous and well-to-do. 

Quite as interesting to me as the houses we 
visited were the stories that our guide told us 
about the people that lived in them. I recall 
among others the story of the young widow 



2 9 o THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

who served in the customs office as a clerk and 
lived in a single room in one corner of the peas- 
ant's cottage to which I have just referred. She 
was a woman, he told me, of the higher classes, 
as her enterprising manner and intelligent face 
seemed to indicate; one of the lesser nobility, 
who had married a Russian official condemned 
for some fault or other to serve at this obscure 
post. He had died here, leaving a child with 
the rickets, and no means. 

Another time our guide pointed out to us a 
more imposing building than the others we had 
seen, though it was built in the same rustic style 
as the smaller peasants' cottages around it. This 
house, it seems, had at one time belonged to 
one of the nobility, but it was now owned by 
a peasant. This peasant, as I understood, had 
at one time been a serf and served as a hostler 
in a wealthy family. From this family he had 
inherited, as a reward for his long and faithful 
service, a considerable sum of money, with 
which he had purchased this place and set him- 
self up, in a small way, as a landlord. 

I gained, I think, a more intimate view of the 
peasant life in Poland than I did in any other 
part of Europe that I visited. For that reason, 
and because I hoped also that these seeming 
trivial matters would, perhaps, prove as inter- 
esting and suggestive to others as they were 



A RUSSIAN BORDER VILLAGE 291 

to me, I have set down in some detail in this 
and the preceding chapters the impressions which 
I gathered there. 

In the little village of Barany, in Russian 
Poland, I had reached the point farthest re- 
moved, if not in distance at least in its institu- 
tions and civilization, from America; but, as I 
stood on a little elevation of land at the edge 
of the village and looked across the rolling 
landscape, I felt that I was merely at the en- 
trance of a world in which, under many outward 
changes and differences of circumstance, there 
was much the same life that I had known and 
lived among the Negro farmers in Alabama. I 
believed, also, that I would find in that life 
of the Russian peasants much that would be 
instructive and helpful to the masses of my own 
people. 

I touched, before I completed my European 
experiences, not only the Austrian, but the 
Russian and German Polish provinces, but I 
should have liked to have gone farther, to 
Warsaw and Posen, and looked deeper into the 
life and learned more of the remarkable strug- 
gle which the Polish people, especially in these 
two latter provinces, are making to preserve the 
Polish nationality and improve the conditions 
of the Polish people. 

In this connection, and in concluding what I 



292 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

have to say about my observations in Poland, 
I want to note one singular, and it seems to me 
suggestive, fact: Of the three sections of the Po- 
lish race, German, Russian, and Austrian, there 
are two in which, according to the information 
I was able to obtain, the people are oppressed, 
and one in which they seem to be, if anything, 
the oppressors. In Russian Poland and in 
German Poland the Polish are making a desper- 
ate struggle to maintain their national existence, 
but in these two countries the Poles are pros- 
perous. Russian Poland has become in recent 
years one of the largest manufacturing centres 
in Europe, and the masses of the Polish people 
have become prosperous citizens and labourers. 
In German Poland the Polish peasants have, 
within the past forty years, become a thrifty 
farming class. The large estates which were 
formerly in the hands of the Polish nobility 
have been, to a very large extent, divided up 
and sold among a rapidly rising class of small 
landowners. In other words, what was orig- 
inally a political movement in these two coun- 
tries to revive and reestablish the kingdom of 
Poland has become a determined effort to lift 
the level of existence among the masses of the 
Polish people. 

In Austrian Poland, on the contrary, where 
the Austrian Government, in order, perhaps, 



A RUSSIAN BORDER VILLAGE 293 

to hold the political aspirations of the Ruthe- 
nians in check, has given them a free hand in the 
government of the province, they have vastly 
greater freedom and they have made less pro- 
gress. 

I am stating this fact baldly, as it was given 
to me, and without any attempt at an ex- 
planation. Many different factors have no 
doubt combined to produce this seeming par- 
adox. I will merely add this further obser- 
vation: Where the Poles are advancing, prog- 
ress has begun at the bottom, among the 
peasants; where they have remained stationary 
the Polish nobility still rules and the masses 
of the people have not yet been forced to any 
great extent into the struggle for national 
existence. The nobles are content with op- 
portunity to play at politics, in something like 
the old traditional way, and have not learned 
the necessity of developing the resources that 
exist in the masses of the people. On the 
other hand, oppression has not yet aroused the 
peasants as it has, particularly in Germany, to 
a united effort to help themselves. 

I mention this fact not merely because it is 
interesting, but because I am convinced that 
any one who studies the movements and prog- 
ress of the Negroes in America will find much 
that is interesting by way of comparison in the 



2 9 4 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

present situation of the Polish people and that 
of the American Negroes. My own observa- 
tion has convinced me, for example, that in 
those states where the leaders of the Negro 
have been encouraged to turn their attention to 
politics the masses of the people have not made 
the same progress that they have in those states 
where the leaders, because of racial prejudice 
or for other reasons, have been compelled to 
seek their own salvation in educating and build- 
ing up, in moral and material directions, the 
more lowly members of their own people. 

I do not wish to make comparisons, but I 
think I can safely say, by way of illustration, 
that in no other part of the United States have 
the masses of the Negroes been more completely 
deprived of political privileges than in the state 
of Mississippi, and yet there is, at the same 
time, scarcely any part of the country in which 
the masses of the people have built more schools 
and churches, or where they have gained a 
more solid foothold on the soil and in the in- 
dustries of the state. 

In calling attention to this fact I do not intend 
to offer an excuse for depriving any members of 
my race of any of the privileges to which the 
law entitles them. I merely wish to emphasize 
the fact that there is hope for them in other 
and more fundamental directions than ordinarv 



A RUSSIAN BORDER VILLAGE 295 

party politics. More especially I wish to 
emphasize one fact — namely, that for the 
Negroes, as for other peoples who are strug- 
gling to get on their feet, success comes to those 
who learn to take advantage of their disad- 
vantages and make their difficulties their 
opportunities. This is what the Poles in 
Germany, to a greater extent than any of the 
other oppressed nationalities in Europe, seem 
to have done. 



CHAPTER XVI 

THE WOMEN WHO WORK IN EUROPE 

SEVERAL times during my stay in Lon- 
don I observed, standing on a corner 
in one of the most crowded parts of 
the city, a young woman selling papers. There 
are a good many women, young and old, who 
sell papers in London, but any one could see at 
a glance that this girl was different. There was 
something in her voice and manner which im- 
pressed me, because it seemed to be at once 
timid, ingratiating, and a little insolent, if that 
is not too strong a word. This young woman 
was, as I soon learned, a Suffragette, and she 
was selling newspapers — "Votes for Women." 
This was my first meeting with the women 
insurgents of England. A day or two later, 
however, I happened to fall in with a number 
of these Suffragette newspaper-sellers. One of 
them, in a lively and amusing fashion, was 
relating the story of the morning's happenings. 
I could hardly help hearing what she said, and 
soon became very much interested in the con- 
versation. In fact, I soon found myself so 

296 



WOMEN WHO WORK IN EUROPE 297 

entertained by the bright and witty accounts 
these young women gave of their adventures 
that it was not long before I began to enter with 
them into the spirit of their crusade and to 
realize for the first time in my life what a glorious 
and exciting thing it was to be a Suffragette, 
and, I might add, what a lot of fun these young 
women were having out of it. 

It had not occurred to me, when I set out from 
America to make the acquaintance of the man 
farthest down, that I should find myself in any 
way concerned with the woman problem. I 
had not been in London more than a few days, 
however, before I discovered that the woman 
who is at the bottom in London life is just as 
interesting as the man in the same level of life, 
and perhaps a more deserving object of study 
and observation. 

In a certain way all that I saw of the condition 
of woman at the bottom connected itself in my 
mind with the agitation that is going on with 
regard to woman at the top. 

Except in England, the women's movement 
has not, so far as I was able to learn, penetrated 
to any extent into the lower strata of life, and 
that strikes me as one of the interesting facts 
about the movement. It shows to what extent 
the interests, hopes, and ambitions of modern 
life have, or rather have not, entered into and 



29 8 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

become a force in the lives of the people at the 
bottom. 

Thus it came about that my interest in all 
that I saw of workingwomen in Europe was 
tinged with the thought of what was going to 
happen when the present agitation for the 
emancipation and the wider freedom of women 
generally should reach and influence the women 
farthest down. 

In my journey through Europe I was in- 
terested, in each of the different countries I 
visited, in certain definite and characteristic 
things. In London, for example, it was some 
of the destructive effects of a highly organized 
and complicated city life, and the methods 
which the Government and organized phil- 
anthropy have employed to correct them, that 
attracted my attention. Elsewhere it was 
chiefly the condition of the agricultural pop- 
ulations that interested me. In all my obser- 
vation and study, however, I found that the 
facts which I have learned about the condition 
of women tended to set themselves off and 
assume a special importance in my mind. It is 
for that reason that I propose to give, as well 
as I am able, a connected account of them at 
this point. 

What impressed me particularly in London 
were the extent and effects of the drinking habit 



WOMEN WHO WORK IN EUROPE 299 

among women of the lower classes. Until I went 
to London I do not believe that I had more than 
once or twice in my life seen women standing 
side by side with the men in order to drink at 
a public bar. One of the first things I noticed 
in London was the number of drunken, loafing 
women that one passed in the streets of the 
poorer quarters. More than once I ran across 
these drunken and besotted creatures, with 
red, blotched faces, which told of years of 
steady excess — ragged, dirty, and disorderly 
in their clothing — leaning tipsily against the 
outside of a gin-parlour or sleeping peacefully on 
the pavement of an alleyway. 

In certain parts of London the bar-room seems 
to be the general meeting place of men and 
women alike. There, in the evening, neighbours 
gather and gossip while they drink their black, 
bitter beer. It is against the law for parents 
to take their children into the bar-rooms, but 
I have frequently observed women standing 
about the door of the tap-room with their 
babies in their arms, leisurely chatting while 
they sipped their beer. In such cases they fre- 
quently give the lees of their glass to the children 
to drink. 

In America we usually think of a bar-room as 
a sort of men's club, and, if women go into such 
a place at all, they are let in surreptitiously 



3 oo THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

at the " family entrance." Among the poorer 
classes in England the bar-room is quite as 
much the woman's club as it is the man's. The 
light, the warmth, and the free and friendly 
gossip of these places make them attractive,- too, 
and I can understand that the people in these 
densely populated quarters of the city, many of 
them living in one or two crowded little rooms, 
should be drawn to these places by the desire 
for a little human comfort and social intercourse. 

In this respect the bar-rooms in the poorer 
parts of London are like the beer halls that one 
meets on the Continent. There is, however, 
this difference — that the effect of drink upon 
the people of England seems to be more de- 
structive than it is in the case of the people on 
the Continent. It is not that the English people 
as a whole consume more intoxicating drink 
than the people elsewhere, because the statistics 
show that Denmark leads the rest of Europe in 
the amount of spirits, just as Belgium leads in 
the amount of beer, consumed per capita of the 
population. One trouble seems to be that, 
under the English industrial system, the people 
take greater chances, they are subject to greater 
stress and strain, and this leads to irregularities 
and to excessive drinking. 

While I was in Vienna I went out one Sunday 
evening to the Prater, the great public park, 



WOMEN WHO WORK IN EUROPE 301 

which seems to be a sort of combination of 
Central Park, New York, and Coney Island. 
In this park one may see all types of Austrian 
life, from the highest to the lowest. Sunday 
seems, however, to be the day of the common 
people, and the night I visited the place there 
were, in addition to the ordinary labouring 
people of the city, hundreds, perhaps thousands, 
of peasant people from the country there. They 
were mostly young men and women who had 
evidently come into the city for the Sunday 
holiday. Beside the sober, modern dress of 
the city crowds these peasant women, with their 
high boots, the bright-coloured kerchiefs over 
their heads, and their wide, flaring, voluminous 
skirts (something like those of a female circus- 
rider, only a little longer and not so gauzy), 
made a strange and picturesque appearance. 

Meanwhile there was a great flare of music 
of a certain sort; and a multitude of catchpenny 
shows, mountebanks, music halls, theatres, 
merry-go-rounds, and dancing pavilions gave 
the place the appearance of a stupendous county 
fair. I do not think that I ever saw anywhere, 
except at a picnic or a barbecue among the 
Negroes of the Southern States, people who gave 
themselves up so frankly and with such entire 
zest to this simple, physical sort of enjoyment. 
Everywhere there were eating, drinking, and 



3 o2 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

dancing, but nevertheless I saw no disorder; 
very few people seemed to be the worse 
for drinking, and in no instance did I see people 
who showed, in the disorder of their dress or 
in the blotched appearance of their faces, the 
effects of continued excesses, such as one sees 
in so many parts of London. Individuals were, 
for the most part, neatly and cleanly dressed; 
each class of people seemed to have its own 
place of amusement and its own code of man- 
ners, and every one seemed to keep easily and 
naturally within the restraints which custom 
prescribed. 

I do not mean to say that I approve of this 
way of spending the Sabbath. I simply desire 
to point out the fact, which others have noticed, 
that the effect of the drinking habit seems to be 
quite different in England from what it is in 
countries on the Continent. 

I had an opportunity to observe the evil 
effects of the drinking habit upon the Eng- 
lishwomen of the lower classes when I visited 
some of the police courts in the poorer parts of 
London. When I remarked to a newspaper 
acquaintance in London that I wanted to see as 
much as I could, while I was in the city, of the 
life of the poorer people, he advised me to visit 
the Worship Street and Thames police stations. 
The Worship Street station is situated in one of 



WOMEN WHO WORK IN EUROPE 303 

the most crowded parts of London, in close 
proximity to Bethnal Green and Spitalfields, 
which have for many years been the homes of 
the poorer working classes, and especially of 
those poor people known as houseworkers and 
casuals, who live in garrets and make paper 
boxes, artificial flowers, etc., or pick up such odd 
jobs as they can find. The Thames station is 
situated a little way from London Dock and not 
far from the notorious Ratcliffe Highway, which 
until a few years ago was the roughest and most 
dangerous part of London. 

Perhaps I ought to say, at the outset, that 
two things in regard to the London police 
courts especially impressed me: first, the order 
and dignity with which the court is conducted; 
second, the care with which. the judge inquires 
into all the facts of every case he tries, the 
anxiety which he shows to secure the rights of 
the defendant, and the leniency with which 
those found guilty are treated. In many cases, 
particularly those in which men or women 
were charged with drunkenness, the prisoners 
were allowed to go with little more than a mild 
and fatherly reprimand. 

After listening for several hours to the various 
cases that came up for hearing, I could well un- 
derstand that the police have sometimes com- 
plained that their efforts to put down crime 



3o 4 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

were not supported by the magistrates, who, 
they say, always take the side of the culprits. 

In this connection I might mention a state- 
ment which I ran across recently of a man who 
had served at one time as a magistrate in both 
the Worship Street and Thames police courts. 
He said that there was a great deal of drunken- 
ness among certain of the factory girls of East 
London, although they were seldom arrested 
and brought into court for that offence. 

He added: "It must not be forgotten that 
the number of convictions for drunkenness is 
•not by any means a proper measure of inso- 
briety. If a policeman sees a drunken man 
conducting himself quietly or sleeping in a door- 
way, he passes on and takes no notice. Those 
who are convicted belong, as a rule, to the dis- 
orderly classes, who, the moment liquor rises 
to their heads, manifest their natural pro- 
pensities by obstreperous and riotous conduct. 
For one drunkard of this order there must be 
fifty who behave quietly and always manage to 
reach their homes, however zigzag may be their 
journey thither." 

That statement was made a number of years 
ago, but I am convinced that it holds good now, 
because I noticed that most of the persons ar- 
rested and brought into court, especially women, 
were bloodstained and badly battered. 



WOMEN WHO WORK IN EUROPE 305 

In the majority of these cases, as I have said, 
the persons were allowed to go with a repri- 
mand or a small fine. The only case in which, 
it seemed to me, the judge showed a disposition 
to be severe was in that of a poor woman who 
was accused of begging. She was a pale, emaci- 
ated, and entirely wretched appearing little 
woman, and the charge against her was that of 
going through the streets, leading one of her chil- 
dren by the hand, and asking for alms because 
she and her children were starving. I learned 
from talking with the officer who investigated 
the case that the statement she made was very 
likely true. He had known her for some time, 
and she was in a very sad condition. But then, 
it seems, the law required that in such circum- 
stances she should have gone to the workhouse. 

I think that there were as many as fifteen or 
twenty women brought into court on each of 
the mornings I visited the court. Most of them 
were arrested for quarrelling and fighting, and 
nearly all of them showed in their bloated faces 
and in their disorderly appearance that steady 
and besotted drunkenness was at the bottom of 
their trouble. 

I have found since I returned from Europe 
that the extent of drunkenness among English- 
women has frequently been a matter of obser- 
vation and comment. Richard Grant White, 



3 o6 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

in his volume "England Within and Without," 
says: 

I was struck with horror at the besotted condition of so many 
of the women — women who were bearing children every year, 
and suckling them, and who* seemed to me little better than 
foul human stills through which the accursed liquor with which 
they were soaked filtered drop by drop into the little drunkards 
at their breasts. To these children drunkenness comes un- 
consciously, like their mother tongue. They cannot remember a 
time when it was new to them. They come out of the cloudland 
of infancy with the impression that drunkenness is one of the 
normal conditions of man, like hunger and sleep. 

This was written thirty years ago. It is said 
that conditions have greatly improved in recent 
years in respect to the amount of drunkenness 
among the poor of London. Nevertheless, I 
notice in the last volume of the "Annual Chari- 
ties Register" for London the statement that 
inebriety seems to be increasing among women, 
and that it prevails to such an alarming extent 
among women in all ranks of society that 
"national action is becoming essential for the 
nation's very existence." 

The statistics of London crime show that, 
while only about half as many women as men 
are arrested on the charges of "simple drunken- 
ness" and "drunkenness with aggravations," 
more than three times as many women as men 
are arrested on the charge of "habitual" 
drunkenness. Another thing that impressed 



WOMEN WHO WORK IN EUROPE 307 

me was that the American police courts deal 
much more severely with women. This is cer- 
tainly true in the Southern States, where al- 
most all the women brought before the police 
courts are Negroes. 

The class of people to whom I have referred 
represent, as a matter of course, the lowest and 
most degraded among the working classes. 
Nevertheless, they represent a very large ele- 
ment in the population, and the very exist- 
ence of this hopeless class, which constitutes 
the. dregs of life in the large cities, is an indica- 
tion of the hardship and bitterness of the strug- 
gle for existence in the classes above them. 

I have attempted in what I have already said 
to indicate the situation of the women at the 
bottom in the complex life of the largest and, if 
I may say so, the most civilized city in the 
world, where women are just now clamouring for 
all the rights and privileges of men. But there 
are parts of Europe where, as far as I have been 
able to learn, women have as yet never heard 
that they had any rights or interests in life 
separate and distinct from those of their hus- 
bands and children. I have already referred 
to the increasing number of barefoot women I 
met as I journeyed southward from Berlin. At 
first these were for the most part women who 
worked in the fields. But by the time I reached 



3 o8 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

Vienna I found that it was no uncommon thing 
to meet barefoot women in the most crowded 
and fashionable parts of the city. 

Experience in travelling had taught me that 
the wearing of shoes is a pretty accurate in- 
dication of civilization. The fact that in a 
large part of southern Europe women who come 
from the country districts have not yet reached 
the point where they feel comfortable in shoes 
is an indication of the backwardness of the 
people. 

What interested and surprised me more than 
the increasing absence of shoes among the 
countrywomen was the increasing number of 
women whom I saw engaged in rough and un- 
skilled labour of every kind. I had never seen 
Negro women doing the sort of work I saw the 
women of southern Europe doing. When I 
reached Prague, for example, I noticed a load 
of coal going through the streets. A man was 
driving it, but women were standing up behind 
with shovels. I learned then that it was the 
custom to employ women to load and unload 
the coal and carry it into the houses. The 
driving and the shovelling were done by the 
man, but the dirtiest and the hardest part of 
the work was performed by the women. 

In Vienna I saw hundreds of women at work 
as helpers in the construction of buildings; they 



WOMEN WHO WORK IN EUROPE 309 

mixed the mortar, loaded it in tubs, placed it 
on their heads, and carried it up two or three 
stories to men at work on the walls. The 
women who engage in this sort of labour wear 
little round mats on their heads, which support 
the burdens which they carry. Some of these 
women are still young, simply grown girls, 
fresh from the country, but the majority of 
them looked like old women. 

Not infrequently I ran across women hauling 
carts through the streets. Sometimes there 
would be a dog harnessed to the cart beside 
them. That, for example, is the way in which 
the countrywomen sometimes bring their garden 
truck to market. More often, however, they 
will be seen bringing their garden products to 
market in big baskets on their heads or swung 
over their shoulders. I remember, while I was 
in Budapest, that, in returning to my hotel 
rather late one night, I passed through an open 
square near the market, where there were 
hundreds of these market women asleep on the 
sidewalks or in the street. Some of them had 
thrown down a truss of straw on the pavement 
under their wagons and gone to sleep there. 
Others, who had brought their produce into 
town from the country on their backs, had in 
many cases merely put their baskets on the 
sidewalk, lain down, thrown a portion of their 



3 io THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

skirts up over their heads, and gone to sleep. 
At this hour the city was still wide awake. 
From a nearby beer hall there came the sounds 
of music and occasional shouts of laughter. 
Meanwhile people were passing and repassing 
in the street and on the sidewalk, but they paid 
no more attention to these sleeping women 
than they would if they had been horses or 
cows. 

In other parts of Austria-Hungary I ran across 
women engaged in various sorts of rough and 
unskilled labour. While I was in Cracow, in 
Austrian Poland, I saw women at work in the 
stone quarries. The men were blasting out the 
rock, but the women were assisting them in 
removing the earth and in loading the wagons. 
At the same time I saw women working in brick- 
yards. The men made the brick, the women 
acted as helpers. While I was in Cracow one 
of the most interesting places I visited in which 
women are employed was a cement factory. 
The man in charge was kind enough to permit 
me to go through the works, and explained the 
process of crushing and burning the stone used 
in the manufacture of cement. A large part of 
the rough work in this cement factory is done 
by girls. The work of loading the kilns is 
performed by them. Very stolid, heavy, and 
dirty-looking creatures they were. They had 



WOMEN WHO WORK IN EUROPE 311 

none of the freshness and health that I noticed 
so frequently among the girls at work in the 
fields. 

While I was studying the different kinds of 
work which women are doing in Austria-Hungary 
I was reminded of the complaint that I had 
heard sometimes from women in America, that 
they were denied their rights in respect to labour, 
that men in America wanted to keep women 
in the house, tied down to household duties. 

In southern Europe, at any rate, there does 
not seem to be any disposition to keep women 
tied up in the houses. Apparently they are 
permitted to do any kind of labour that men are 
permitted to do; and they do, in fact, perform 
a great many kinds of labour that we in America 
think fit. only for men. I noticed, moreover, 
as a rule, that it was only the rough, unskilled 
labour which was allotted to them. If women 
worked in the stone quarries, men did the part 
of the work that required skill. Men used the 
tools, did the work of blasting the rock. If 
women worked on the buildings, they did only 
the roughest and cheapest kinds of work. I did 
not see any women laying brick, nor did I see 
anywhere women carpenters or stone-masons. 

In America Negro women and children are 
employed very largely at harvest time in the 
cotton-fields, but I never saw in America, as 



3 i2 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

I have seen in Austria, women employed as 
section hands on a railway, or digging sewers, 
hauling coal, carrying the hod, or doing the 
rough work in brickyards, kilns, and cement 
factories. 

In the Southern States of America the lowest 
form of unskilled labour is that of the men who 
are employed on what is known as public works 
— that is to say, the digging of sewers, building 
of railways, and so forth. I was greatly sur- 
prised, while I was in Vienna, to see women en- 
gaged side by side with men in digging a sewer. 
This was such a novel sight to me that I stopped 
to watch these women handle the pick and 
shovel. They were, for the most part, young 
women, of that heavy, stolid type I have re- 
ferred to. I watched them for some time, and 
I could not see but that they did their work as 
rapidly and as easily as the men beside them. 
After this I came to the conclusion that there 
was not anything a man could do which a woman 
could not do also. 

In Poland the women apparently do most of 
the work on the farms. Many of the men have 
gone to Vienna to seek their fortune. Many, 
also, have gone to the cities, and still others are 
in the army, because on the Continent every 
able-bodied man must serve in the army. The 
result is that more and more of the work that 



WOMEN WHO WORK IN EUROPE 313 

was formerly performed by men is now done 
by women. 

One of the most interesting sights I met in 
Europe was the market in Cracow. This mar- 
ket is a large open square in the very centre 
of the ancient city. In this square is situated 
the ancient Cloth Hall, a magnificent old build- 
ing, which dates back to the Middle Ages, when 
it was used as a place for the exhibition of mer- 
chandise, principally textiles of various kinds. 
On the four sides of this square are some of the 
principal buildings of the city, including the 
City Hall and the Church of the Virgin Mary, 
from the tall tower of which the hours are 
sounded by the melodious notes of a bugle. 

On market days this whole square is crowded 
with hundreds, perhaps thousands, of market 
women, who come in from the country in the 
early morning with their produce, remain until 
it is sold, and then return to their homes. 

In this market one may see offered for sale 
anything and everything that the peasant 
people produce in their homes or on the farms. 
Among other things for sale I noted the follow- 
ing: geese, chickens, bread, cheese, potatoes, 
salads, fruits of various sorts, mushrooms, bas- 
kets, toys, milk, and butter. 

What interested me as much as anything was 
to observe that nearly everything that was sold 



3 i4 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

in this market was carried into the city on the 
backs of the women. Practically, I think, one 
may say that the whole city of Cracow, with 
a population of 90,000 persons, is fed on the 
provisions that the peasant women carry into 
the city, some of them travelling as far as ten 
or fifteen miles daily. 

One day, while driving in the market of 
Cracow, our carriage came up with a vigorous 
young peasant woman who was tramping, bare- 
foot, briskly along the highway with a bundle 
swung on her shoulder. In this bundle, I 
noticed, she carried a milk-can. We stopped, 
and the driver spoke to her in Polish and then 
translated to my companion, Doctor Park, in 
German. At first the woman seemed appre- 
hensive and afraid. As soon as we told her we 
were from America, however, her face lighted 
up and she seemed very glad to answer all my 
questions. 

I learned that she was a widow, the owner of 
a little farm with two cows. She lived some- 
thing like fourteen kilometres (about ten miles) 
from the city, and every day she came into town 
to dispose of the milk she had from her two 
cows. She did not walk all the way, but rode 
half the distance in the train, and walked the 
other half. She owned a horse, she said, but 
the horse was at work on the farm, and she 



WOMEN WHO WORK IN EUROPE 315 

could not afford to use him to drive to town. 
In order to take care of and milk her cows and 
reach the city early enough to deliver her milk 
she had to get up very early in the morning, so 
that she generally got back home about ten or 
eleven o'clock. Then, in the afternoon, she took 
care of the house and worked in the garden. 
This is a pretty good example, I suspect, of 
the way some of these peasant women work. 

All day long one sees these women, with their 
bright-coloured peasant costumes, coming and 
going through the streets of Cracow with their 
baskets on their backs. Many of them are 
barefoot, but most of them wear very high 
leather boots, which differ from those I have 
seen worn by peasant women in other parts of 
Austria and Hungary in the fact that they have 
very small heels. 

I had an opportunity to see a great many 
types of women in the course of my journey 
across Europe, but I saw none who looked so 
handsome, fresh, and vigorous as these Polish 
peasant women. 

It is said of the Polish women, as it is said of 
the women of the Slavic races generally, that 
they are still living in the mental and physical 
slavery of former ages. Probably very few of 
them have ever heard of women's rights. But, 
if that is true, it simply shows how very little 



3 i6 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

connection such abstract words have with the 
condition, welfare, and happiness of the people 
who enjoy the freedom and independence of 
country life. At any rate, I venture to say that 
there are very few women, even in the higher 
ranks of labouring women in England, whose 
condition in life compares with that of these vig- 
orous, wholesome, and healthy peasant women. 

How can work in the stifling atmosphere of 
a factory or in some crowded city garret com- 
pare with the life which these women lead, 
working in the fields and living in the free and 
open country? 

The emigration to America has left an enor- 
mous surplus of women in Europe. In Eng- 
land, for instance, the women stand in the pro- 
portion of sixteen to fifteen to the men. In 
some parts of Italy there are cities, it is said, 
where all the able-bodied men have left the 
country and gone to America. The changes 
brought by emigration have not, on the whole, 
it seems to me, affected the life of women favour- 
ably. But the same thing is true with regard 
to the changes brought about by the growth 
of cities and the use of machinery. Men have 
profited by the use of machinery more than 
women. The machines have taken away from 
the women the occupations they had in the 
homes, and this has driven them to take up 



WOMEN WHO WORK IN EUROPE 317 

other forms of labour, of more or less temporary 
character, in which they are overworked and 
underpaid. 

Everywhere we find the women in Europe 
either doing the obsolete things or performing 
some form of unskilled labour. For example, 
there are still one hundred thousand people, 
mostly women, in East London, it is said, who 
are engaged in home industries — in other 
words, sweating their lives away in crowded 
garrets trying to compete with machinery and 
organization in the making of clothes or artificial 
flowers, and in other kinds of work of this same 
general description. 

The movement for women's suffrage in Eng- 
land, which began in the upper classes among the 
women of the West End, has got down, to some 
extent, to the lower levels among the women 
who work with the hands. Women's suffrage 
meetings have been held, I have learned, in 
Bethnal Green and Whitechapel. But I do 
not believe that voting alone will improve the 
condition of workingwomen. 

There must be a new distribution of the occu- 
pations. Too many women in Europe are per- 
forming a kind of labour for which they are 
not naturally fitted and for which they have 
had no special training. There are too many 
women in the ranks of unskilled labour. My own 



318 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

conviction is that what the workingwomen of 
Europe need most is a kind of education that 
will lift a larger number of them into the ranks 
of skilled labour — that will teach them to do 
something, and to do that something well. 

The Negro women in America have a great 
advantage in this respect. They are every- 
where admitted to the same schools to which 
the men are admitted. All the Negro colleges 
are crowded with women. They are admitted 
to the industrial schools and to training in the 
different trades on the same terms as men. One 
of the chief practical results of the agitation for 
the suffrage in Europe will be, I imagine, to turn 
the attention of the women in the upper classes 
to the needs of the women in the lower classes. 
In Europe there is much work for women among 
their own sex, for, as I have said elsewhere, in 
Europe the man farthest down is woman. 



CHAPTER XVII 

THE ORGANIZATION OF COUNTRY LIFE IN 
DENMARK 

IN EUROPE the man whose situation most 
nearly corresponds to that of the Negro in 
the Southern States is the peasant. I had 
seen pictures of peasants before I went to Europe, 
but I confess that I was very hazy as to what a 
peasant was. I knew that he was a small farmer, 
like the majority of the Negro farmers in the 
Southern States, and that, like the Negro farmer 
again, he had in most cases descended from a 
class that had at one time been held in some sort 
of subjection to the large landowners, the dif- 
ference being that, whereas the peasant had 
been a serf, the Negro farmer had been a slave. 

In regard to the present position of the peasant 
in the life about him, in regard to his manner of 
living, his opportunities and ambitions, I had 
but the vaguest sort of an idea. The pictures 
which I had seen were not reassuring in this 
regard. The picture which made the deepest 
impression upon my mind was that of a heavy, 
stupid, half-human looking creature, standing 

319 



320 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

in the midst of a desolate field. The mud and 
the clay were clinging to him and he was leaning 
on a great, heavy, wrought-iron hoe, such as 
were formerly used by the Negro slaves. This 
picture represented about my idea of a peasant. 
In the course of my journey through Italy 
and through Austria-Hungary I saw a number 
of individuals who reminded me of this and 
other pictures of peasants that I can recall. I 
saw, as I have already said, peasant women 
sleeping, like tired animals, in the city streets; 
I saw others living in a single room with their 
cattle; at one time I entered a little cottage and 
saw the whole family eating out of a single bowl. 
In Sicily I found peasants living in a condition 
of dirt, poverty, and squalor almost beyond 
description. But everywhere I found among 
these people, even the lowest, individuals who, 
when I had an opportunity to talk with them, 
invariably displayed an amount of shrewd, 
practical wisdom, kindly good nature, and 
common sense that reminded me of some of the 
old Negro farmers with whom I am acquainted 
at home. It is very curious what a difference 
it makes in the impression that a man makes 
upon you if you stop and shake hands with him, 
instead of merely squinting at him critically in 
order to take a cold sociological inventory of his 
character and condition. 



COUNTRY LIFE IN DENMARK 321 

Some of the pleasantest recollections I have 
of Europe are the talks I had, through an inter- 
preter, of course, with some of these same 
ignorant but hard-working, sometimes barefoot, 
but always kindly peasants. The result was 
that long before I had completed my journey I 
had ceased to take some of the pictures of peas- 
ants I had seen literally. I discovered that the 
artist whose pictures had made so deep an im- 
pression upon me had sought to compress into 
the figure of a single individual the misery and 
wretchedness of a whole class; that he had tried, 
also, to bring to the surface and make visible 
in his picture all the hardships and the degrada- 
tion which the casual observer does not see, 
perhaps does not want to see. 

It was not until I reached Denmark, however, 
that I began to feel that I had really begun to 
know the European peasant, because it was not 
until I reached that country that I saw what the 
possibilities of the peasant were. Before this I 
had seen a man who was struggling up under 
the weight of ignorance and the remains of an 
ancient oppression. In Denmark, however, this 
man has come to his own. Peasants already own 
a majority of the land. Three fourths of the 
farms are in their hands and the number of small 
farms is steadily increasing. In Denmark the 
peasant, as a certain gentleman whom I met 



322 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

there observed, is not only free, but he rules. 
The peasant is the leader in everything that 
relates to the progress of agriculture. The 
products of the cooperative dairies, the coop- 
erative egg-collecting and pork-packing socie- 
ties, organized and controlled by the peasants, 
bring in the markets of the world higher prices 
than similar products from any other country 
in Europe. 

The peasants are now the controlling influence 
in the Danish Parliament. When I was there 
half the members of the ministry in power were 
peasants, and half the members of the cabinet 
were either peasants or peasants' sons. 

Let me add that there is a very close connec- 
tion between the price of the peasants' butter 
and the influence which the peasants exercise in 
politics. For a good many years, up to about 
1901, I believe, the most influential party in 
Denmark was that represented by the large 
landowners. Forty years ago the peasants had 
all the political rights they now possess, but they 
did not count for much in political matters. At 
that time there were two kinds of butter in 
Denmark: there was the butter made in the 
creameries of the large landowners, called gentle- 
men's estates, and there was the butter from the 
small farmers. In other words, there was 
"gentleman's butter" and "peasant's butter." 



COUNTRY LIFE IN DENMARK 323 

The peasant butter, however, was only worth 
in the market about one half as much as that 
from the gentleman's estate. When the price 
of peasant butter began to rise, however, the 
political situation began to change. Year by 
year the number of cooperative dairies increased 
and, year by year, the number of peasant farmers 
in parliament multiplied. In other words, the 
Danish peasant has become a power in Danish 
politics because he first became a leader in the 
industrial development of the country. 

Denmark is not only very small, about one 
third the size of Alabama, but it is not even 
especially fertile. It is an extremely level 
country, without hills, valleys, or running 
streams worth speaking of. I was told that the 
highest point in Denmark, which is called 
"Heaven's Hill," is only about 550 feet above 
sea level — that is to say about half as high as 
the tower of the Metropolitan Building in New 
York. As a result of this a large part of the 
country is windswept and, in northern Jutland, 
where the Danish peninsula thrusts a thin streak 
of land up into the storm-tossed waters of the 
North Sea, there were, forty years ago, 3,300 
square miles of heather where not even a tree 
would grow. Since that time, by an elaborate 
process of physical and chemical manipulation of 
the soil, all but a thousand square miles have 



324 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

been reclaimed. The result is that where once 
only lonely shepherds wandered, " knitting stock- 
ings," as Jacob Riis says, "to pay the taxes," 
there are now flourishing little cities. 

Another disadvantage which Denmark suffers 
has its origin in the fact that more than one 
third of the country consists of islands, of which 
there are no less than forty-four. In going from 
Copenhagen to Hamburg the train on which I 
travelled, in crossing from one island to another 
and from there to the peninsula, was twice com- 
pelled to make the passage by means of a ferry, 
and at one of these passages we were on the 
boat for about an hour and a half. 

Riding or driving through Denmark to-day 
is like riding through Illinois or any other of the 
farming regions of the Middle Western States, 
with the exception that the fields are smaller 
and the number of men, cattle, and homesteads 
is much larger than one will see in any part of 
the United States. I have heard travellers 
through Denmark express regret because with 
the progress of the country, the quaint peasant 
costumes and the other characteristics of the 
primitive life of the peasant communities, which 
one may still see in other parts of Europe, have 
disappeared. One of my fellow-travellers tried 
to make me believe that the peasants in Europe 
were very much happier in the quiet, simple life 



COUNTRY LIFE IN DENMARK 325 

of these small and isolated farming communities, 
each with its own picturesque costumes, its in- 
teresting local traditions, and its curious super- 
stitions. 

This seems to be the view of a good many 
tourists. After what I have seen in Europe I 
have come to the conclusion, however, that the 
people and the places that are the most in- 
teresting to look at are not always the happiest 
and most contented. On the contrary, I have 
found that the places in which the life of 
the peasants is most interesting to tourists 
are usually the places that the peasants are 
leaving in the largest numbers. Emigration 
to America is making a large part of Europe 
commonplace, but it is making a better place 
to live in. 

The reorganization of agricultural life in Den- 
mark has come about in other ways than by 
emigration, but it has left very little of the 
picturesque peasant life, and most of what re- 
mains is now kept in museums. I noticed in 
going through the country, however, two types 
of farm buildings which seem to have survived 
from an earlier time. One of these consisted of 
a long, low building, one end of which was a barn 
and the other a dwelling. The other type of 
building was of much the same shape, except 
that it formed one side of a court, the other two 



326 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

sides of which were enclosed by barns and 
stables. 

Upon inquiry I learned that the first type of 
dwelling belonged to a man who was called a 
husmaend, or houseman; in other words, a small 
farmer whose property consisted of his house, 
with a very small strip of land around it. The 
other type of dwelling belonged to a man who 
was called a gaardmaend, or yardman, because 
he owned enough land to have a gaarde, or yard. 
In Denmark farmers are still generally divided 
into huse and gaarde; all farmers owning less 
than twenty-four acres are called " housemen," 
and all having more than that are called "yard- 
men," no matter how their buildings are con- 
structed. 

As a matter of fact, it is not so long since 
conditions in Denmark were just about as 
primitive as they are now in some other parts of 
Europe. Jacob Riis, whom I learned, while I 
was in Denmark, is just as widely known and 
admired in Denmark as he is in the United 
States, says that he can remember when con- 
ditions were quite different among the homes 
of the people. "For example," he said, "I 
recall the time when in every peasant's family 
it was the custom for all to sit down and eat out 
of the same bowl in the centre of the table and 
then, after the meal was finished, each would 



COUNTRY LIFE IN DENMARK 327 

wipe the spoon with which he had dipped into 
the common bowl, and without any further 
ceremony tuck it away on a little shelf over his 
head. 

"To-day," he added, "Danish farmers wash 
their pigs. The udders of the cows are washed 
with a disinfecting fluid before milking. When 
a man goes to milk he puts on a clean white 



suit." 



Not only is this true, but the Danish farmer 
grooms his cows, and blankets them when it is 
cold. He does this not only because it is good 
for the cow, but because it makes a saving in 
the feed. Although Denmark has more cattle 
in proportion to the number of inhabitants than 
any other part of Europe, I noticed very few 
pastures. On the contrary, as I passed through 
the country I observed long rows of tethered 
cattle, feeding from the green crops. As rapidly 
as the cows have consumed all the green fodder, 
usually four or five times a day, a man comes 
along and moves the stakes forward so that the 
cattle advance in orderly way, mowing down 
the crops in sections. Water is brought to the 
cows in a cart and they are milked three times 
a day. All of this requires a large increase of 
labour as well as constant study, care, and atten- 
tion. In other words, the Danish peasant has 
become a scientific farmer. 



328 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

One difference between the farmer in Den- 
mark and in other countries is that, whereas 
the ordinary farmer raises his crops and ships 
them to the market to be sold, the Danish 
farmer sells nothing but the manufactured 
product, and as far as possible he sells it direct 
to the consumer. For example, until about 
1880 Denmark was still a grain exporting coun- 
try; in recent years, however, it has become a 
grain importing country. Grain and fodder of 
various kinds to the value of something like 
twenty-five millions of dollars are now annually 
purchased by Danish farmers in Russia and 
neighbouring countries. The agricultural prod- 
ucts thus imported are fed to the cattle, swine, 
and chickens and thus converted into butter, 
pork, and eggs. The butter is manufactured 
in a cooperative dairy; the pork is slaughtered 
in a cooperative pork-packing house; the eggs 
are collected and packed by a cooperative egg- 
collecting association. Then they are either 
sold direct, or are turned over to a central co- 
operative selling association, which disposes of 
the most of them in England. The annual ex- 
ports to England amount to nearly $90,000,000 
a year, of which $51,000,000 is for butter, nearly 
$30,000,000 for bacon, and the remainder for 
eggs. 

As a gentleman whom I met in Denmark put 



COUNTRY LIFE IN DENMARK 329 

it: "If Denmark, like ancient Gaul, were divided 
into three parts, one of these would be butter, 
another pork, and the third eggs." It is from 
these things that the country, in the main, gets 
its living. There are in Denmark, as elsewhere, 
railways, newspapers, telephones, merchants, 
preachers, teachers, and all the other accessories 
of a high civilization, but they are all supported 
from the sale of butter, pork, and eggs, to which 
ought to be added cattle, for Denmark still ex- 
ports a considerable amount of beef and live cat- 
tle. The export of live cattle has, however, fallen 
from about #21,000,000 a year in 1880 to about 
#7,000,000, but in the same period the excess of 
butter, bacon, and eggs has risen from some- 
thing like #7,000,000 to over #70,000,000. Mean- 
while the raw production of the Danish farms 
has increased 50 per cent, and more, the dif- 
ference being that, instead of producing grains 
for the manufacture of flour and meal, the 
Danish farmers have turned their attention to 
producing root crops to feed their cattle. This 
means that the peasant in Denmark is not 
merely a scientific farmer, as I have already 
suggested, but he is at the same time, in a small 
way, a business man. 

The success of the peasant farmer in Den- 
mark is, as I have already suggested, due to a 
very large extent to the cooperative societies 



33o THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

which manufacture and sell his farm products. 
Through the medium of these the Danish peas- 
ant has become a business man — I might almost 
say, a capitalist. I do not know how much 
money is invested in these different cooperative 
dairies, egg-collectingand pork-packing concerns, 
but all Denmark is dotted with them, and the 
total amount of money invested in them must 
be considerable. There are, for example, 1,157 
cooperative dairies, with a membership of 
157,000. The number of cooperative pork- 
packing societies is 34, with a membership of 
95,000. 

As soon as I found to what extent the peasants 
were manufacturing and selling their own prod- 
ucts, I naturally wanted to know how they had 
succeeded in getting the capital to carry on these 
large enterprises, because in the part of the 
country from which I hail the average farmer 
not only has no money to put into any sort of 
business outside his farm, but has to borrow 
money, frequently at a high rate of interest, to 
carry on his farming operations. I found that 
when the farmers in Denmark began establish- 
ing cooperative dairies some of the well-to-do 
farmers came together and signed a contract to 
send all their milk which they were not able to 
use at home to the community dairy. Then they 
borrowed money on their land to raise the money 



COUNTRY LIFE IN DENMARK 331 

to begin operations. In borrowing this money 
they bound themselves "jointly and severally," 
as the legal phrase is, to secure the payments of 
the money borrowed — that is, each man be- 
came individually responsible for the whole loan. 
This gave the bank which made the loan a much 
better security than if each individual had se- 
cured a loan on his own responsibility, and in 
this way it was possible to provide the capital 
needed at a very moderate rate of interest. 

When the farmer brought his milk to the 
common dairy he was paid a price for it a little 
less than the average market price. This added 
something to the working capital. At the end 
of the year a portion of the earnings of the dairy 
were set aside to pay interest charges, another 
portion was used to pay off the loan, and the 
remainder was divided in profits among the 
members of the association, each receiving an 
amount proportionate to the milk he had con- 
tributed. In this way the farmer in the course 
of some years found himself with a sum of 
money, equal to his individual share, invested 
in a paying enterprise that was every year in- 
creasing in value. In the meanwhile he had 
received more for his milk than if he had sold 
it in the ordinary way. At the same time, out 
of the annual profits he received from his share 
in the dairy, he had, perhaps, been able to put 



332 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

some money in the savings bank. The savings 
banks have always been popular and have played 
a much more important part in the life of the 
people than they have elsewhere. At the present 
time the average amount of deposits in propor- 
tion to the number of inhabitants is larger than 
is true of any other country in the world. For 
example, the average amount of deposits in the 
Danish savings banks is $77.88; in England 
$20.62; in the United States $31.22. At the 
same time the number of depositors in Danish 
savings banks is considerably larger than in other 
countries. For example, there are fifty-one 
depositors for every hundred persons in Den- 
mark. In England the corresponding number 
is twenty-seven. 

The most remarkable thing about the Danish 
savings banks, however, is that 78 per cent. — 
nearly four fifths — of them are located in the 
rural districts. That is one reason that Danish 
farmers have not found it difficult to secure 
the capital they needed to organize and carry 
on their cooperative enterprises. With the 
money which they had saved and put in the 
savings bank from the earnings in the coopera- 
tive dairies they were able to borrow money 
with which to start their cooperative slaughter- 
houses and egg-collecting societies. 

But these are only a few of the different types 



COUNTRY LIFE IN DENMARK 333 

of cooperative organizations. A Danish peasant 
may be a member of a society for the purchase 
of tools, implements, and other necessaries, of 
which there are fifteen in Denmark, with a 
membership numbering between sixty and 
seventy thousand. He may belong to a society 
for exporting cattle, for collecting and exporting 
eggs, for horse breeding, for cattle, sheep, and 
pig breeding. Finally he may belong to what 
are known as "control" societies, organized for 
the purpose of keeping account, by means of 
careful registration, of the milk yield of each cow 
belonging to a member of the society, and of 
the butter-fat in the milk, and the relation 
between the milk yield and the fodder consumed. 
The value of these societies is found in the fact 
that the annual yield per cow in the case of 
members of the control society was 67,760 
pounds, while in the case of cows owned outside 
of the society the amount was 58,520 pounds. 

Through the medium of these different socie- 
ties, some of which are purely commercial, 
while others exist for the purpose of improving 
the methods and technique of agriculture, the 
farming industry has become thoroughly organ- 
ized. First of all, there has been a great saving 
in cost of handling and selling farm products. 
Not many years ago the Danish farmer used to 
send his butter to England by way of Hamburg, 



334 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

and there were at that time, I have been told, 
no less than six middlemen who came between 
the farmer and his customer. Now the co- 
operative manufacturing and selling societies 
sell a large part of their products direct to the 
cooperative purchasing societies in England. 
In this way the farmer and his customer, the 
producer and distributer, are brought together 
again, not exactly in the way in which they 
still come together in some of the old-fashioned 
market places in Europe, but still in a way to 
benefit both classes. For one thing, as a result 
of this organization of the farming industry, 
farming methods and the whole technical side 
of the industry have been greatly benefited. A 
striking evidence of this fact is found in the 
following statistics showing the rapid increase 
in the annual yield of milk per cow in the period 
from 1898 to 1908: 

Annual yield 
per cow in 
Year pounds 

1898 4>4 8 ° 

1901 4> 88 4 

1904 • • • 5.335 

1907 5> 68 9 

1908 ...» 5.874 

I might add, as showing the extent to which 
Danish agriculture has been organized in the 
way I have described, that now Denmark pro- 



COUNTRY LIFE IN DENMARK 335 

duces about 253,000,000 pounds of butter every 
year. Of this amount 220,000,000 pounds come 
from the cooperative dairies. 

Behind all other organizations which have 
served to increase efficiency of the farming 
population are the schools, particularly the 
rural high schools and the agricultural schools. 
It is generally agreed in Denmark that the co- 
operative organizations which have done so 
much for the farming population of that coun- 
try could not exist if the rural high schools had 
not prepared the way for them. 

I have described at some length, in another 
place, my impressions of the Danish schools, 
and shall not attempt to repeat here what I have 
said elsewhere.* I would like to emphasize, how- 
ever, certain peculiarities about these schools 
that have particularly impressed me. In the 
first place, the schools that I visited, and, as I 
understand, practically all the schools that 
have been erected for the benefit of the 
rural population, are located either in the neigh- 
bourhood of the small towns or in the open 
country. In other words, they are close to 
the land and the people they are designed to 
help. In the second place, and this is just as 
true of the rural high schools, where almost no 

*" What I Learned About Education in Denmark," chapter XI. " My 
Larger Education," Doubleday, Page & Company, 1911. 



336 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

technical training is attempted, as it is of the 
agricultural schools, the courses have been es- 
pecially worked out, after years of experiment 
and study, to fit the needs of the people for 
whom they are intended. There is no attempt 
to import into these schools the learning or style 
or methods of the city high schools or colleges. 
There is in fact, so far as I know, no school in 
existence that corresponds to or of which the 
Danish rural high school is in any way a copy. 

In the third place, all these schools are for 
older pupils. The ages of the students range 
from sixteen to twenty-four years, and, in addi- 
tion to the regular courses, conferences and 
short courses for the older people have been 
established, as is the case with many of the 
Negro industrial schools in the South. In fact, 
everything possible is done to wed the work 
in the school to the life and work on the land. 

Finally, and this seems to me quite as im- 
portant as anything else, these schools, like the 
cooperative societies to which I have referred, 
have grown up as the result of private initiative. 
The high schools had their origin in a popular 
movement begun more than fifty years ago by 
Nicola Frederik Severin Grundvig, a great 
religious reformer, who is sometimes referred to 
as the Luther of Denmark. 

Denmark was at this time almost in despair. 



COUNTRY LIFE IN DENMARK 337 

England in the course of the war with Napoleon 
had destroyed the Danish fleet, and later, in 
1864, Germany had taken from Denmark two 
of her best provinces and one third of her terri- 
tory. Grundvig believed that the work of re- 
constructing and regenerating Denmark must 
begin at the bottom. He preached the doctrine 
that what Denmark had lost without she must 
regain within, and, with this motto, he set to 
work to develop the neglected resources of the 
country — namely, those which were in the 
people themselves. 

The work begun by Grundvig has been taken 
up and carried on in the same spirit by those 
who have followed him. The results of this 
movement show themselves in every department 
of life in Denmark — in the rapid increase of 
Danish exports and in the healthy democratic 
spirit of the whole Danish population. The 
Danish people are probably the best educated 
and best informed people in Europe. This is 
not simply my impression; it is that of more 
experienced travellers than myself. 

On my way from Copenhagen to London I 
fell in with an English gentleman who was just 
returning from five weeks of study and observa- 
tion of farming conditions in Denmark. From 
him I was able to obtain a great many interest- 
ing details which confirmed my own impressions. 



338 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

He told me, I remember, that he had noticed 
in the cottage of a peasant, a man who did not 
farm more than four or five acres of land, copies 
of at least four periodicals to which he was a 
regular subscriber. 

"More than that," he continued, "the farmers' 
journals which I saw in the peasants' houses I 
visited seemed to me remarkably technical and 
literary." This remark struck me, because it 
had never occurred to me that any of the agri- 
cultural papers I had seen in America could 
be described as "technical and literary." If 
they were I am afraid the farmers, at least the 
farmers in my part of the country, would not 
read them. 

As illustrating the general intelligence of 
the farming population, this same gentleman 
told me that he had at one time called upon a 
creamery manager in a remote district whose 
salary, in addition to his house, which was pro- 
vided him, was about twenty-four shillings, or 
six dollars, a week. In his house he found a 
recent copy of the Studio, a well-known English 
art publication. On his book shelves, in addi- 
tion to the ordinary publications of a dairy 
expert, he had caught sight of volumes in Eng- 
lish, French, German, and Swedish. 

I was impressed with the fact that almost 
every one I met in Denmark seemed to be able to 



COUNTRY LIFE IN DENMARK 339 

speak at least three languages — namely, Ger- 
man, English, and Danish. I had been greatly 
surprised on the Sunday night of my arrival to 
meet an audience of fully 3,000 persons and 
find that at least the majority of those present 
were able to understand my speech. In fact 
I had not spoken ten minutes when I found 
myself talking as naturally and as easily to this 
Danish audience as if I was addressing a similar 
number of people in America. The people even 
flattered me by laughing at my jokes, and in the 
right places. I am convinced that any one who 
can understand an American joke can under- 
stand almost anything in the English language. 

There is a saying to the effect that if you see 
a large building in Germany you may know 
that it is a military barracks, in England it is a 
factory, in Denmark a school. I never saw such 
healthy, happy, robust school children as I did 
in Denmark, and, with all respect to Danish 
agriculture, I am convinced that the best crop 
that Denmark raises is its children. 

While other countries have sought to increase 
the national wealth and welfare by developing 
the material resources, Denmark, having neither 
coal, iron, oil, nor any other mineral, nothing 
but the land, has increased not only the national 
wealth but the national comfort and happiness 
by improving her people. While other nations 



34o THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

have begun the work of education and, I was 
going to say, civilization, at the top, Denmark 
has begun at the bottom. In doing this Den- 
mark has demonstrated that it pays to educate 
the man farthest down. 












CHAPTER XVIII 

RECONSTRUCTING THE LIFE OF THE LABOURER 
IN LONDON 

AT THE end of my long journey across 
Europe I returned to London. I had 
seen, during my visit to Denmark, 
some results of the reorganization of country 
life. In this chapter I want to tell something 
of what I saw and learned in London of the 
efforts to reconstruct the life of the Underman 
in the more complex conditions of a great city. 
In the course of my travels through various 
parts of the United States, in the effort to arouse 
public interest in the work we are trying to do 
for the Negro at Tuskegee, I have frequently 
met persons who have inquired of me, with 
some anxiety, as to what, in my opinion, could 
be done for the city Negroes, especially that 
class which is entering in considerable numbers 
every year into the life of the larger cities in 
the Northern and Southern States. The people 
who asked this question assumed, apparently 
because the great majority of the Negro popula- 
tion lives on the plantations and in the small 

341 



342 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

towns of the South, that the work of a school 
like the Tuskegee Institute, which is located in 
the centre of a large Negro farming population, 
must be confined to the rural Negro and the 
South. 

In reply to these inquiries I have sometimes 
tried to point out that a good many of the 
problems of the city have their sources in the 
country and that, perhaps, the best way to 
better the situation of the city Negro is to im- 
prove the condition of the masses of the race in 
the country. To do this, I explained, would be 
to attack the evil at its root, since if country 
life were made more attractive, the flow of popu- 
lation to the city would largely cease. 

What is true in this respect of the masses of 
the Negroes in America is equally true, as I 
discovered, of similar classes in Europe. Any 
one who will take the trouble to look into the 
cause of European emigration will certainly be 
struck with the fact that the conditions of 
agriculture in Europe have had a marked effect 
on the growth and character of American cities. 

This fact suggests the close connection be- 
tween country conditions and the city problem, 
but there is still another side to the matter. 
The thing that was mainly impressed upon me 
by my observation of the lower strata of London 
life and the efforts that have been made to im- 



LIFE OF THE LABOURER IN LONDON 343 

prove it was this : That it is a great deal simpler 
and, in the long run, a great deal cheaper to 
build up and develop a people who have grown 
up in the wholesome air of the open country 
than it is to regenerate a people who have lived 
all or most of their lives in the fetid atmosphere 
of a city slum. In other words, it is easier to 
deal with people who are physically and morally 
sound than with people who, by reason of their 
unhealthy and immoral surroundings, have be- 
come demoralized and degenerate. The first 
is a problem of education; the second, one of 
reconstruction and regeneration. 

I think the thing that helped me most to 
realize the extent and the difficulty of this work 
of regeneration in London was the knowledge 
that I gained while there of the multitude of in- 
stitutions and agencies, of various kinds, which 
are engaged in this work. 

I had been impressed, during my visits to 
Whitechapel and other portions of the East 
End of London, with the number of shelters, 
homes, refuges, and missions of all kinds which 
I saw advertised as I passed along Whitechapel 
Road. When I inquired of Rev. John Harris, 
organizing secretary of the Anti-Slavery Society, 
who had at one time himself been engaged in 
mission work in that part of the city, whether it 
were possible to obtain a complete list of all 



344 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

the different types of charities and institutions 
of social betterment in London, he placed in my 
hands a volume of nearly seven hundred pages 
devoted entirely to the classification and descrip- 
tion of the various charities, most of which were 
located in London. 

This book, which was called the "Annual 
Charities Register and Digest," I have read and 
studied with the greatest interest. I confess 
that I was amazed as well at the number and 
variety of the different charities as at the 
amount of time, energy, and money necessary 
to keep up and maintain them. 

In another volume, "London Statistics," pub- 
lished by the London County Council, I found 
the facts about London charities concisely sum- 
marized. From these books I learned that there 
are something like 2,035 charitable institutions 
of various kinds in London alone. Perhaps I 
can best give some idea of the character of these 
institutions, a number of which date back to 
the eighteenth century and perhaps to still 
earlier periods, by giving some details from these 
two volumes. 

There are in London, for example, 112 in- 
stitutions for the blind, and 143 institutions 
which give medical aid in one form or another, 
for which the total amount of money expended 
is about five million seven hundred thousand 



LIFE OF THE LABOURER IN LONDON 345 

dollars annually. There are 214 institutions 
for the care of convalescents, for which the 
annual expenditure amounts to nearly a million 
and three quarters; 220 homes for children and 
training homes for servants, which are main- 
tained at an annual expense of over four million 
dollars annually; 257 institutions for " general 
and specific relief," which are supported at an 
annual cost of nearly six millions. 

There are, besides these, 159 institutions for 
"penitents," which receive an income of a 
million per year; 156 institutions for social and 
physical improvement, which include a mul- 
titude of the most varied sorts, as, for example, 
educational, temperance, and Christian asso- 
ciations, social settlements, boys' brigades, 
societies for the improvement of dwellings, for 
the improvement of national health, for sup- 
pression of the white slave traffic, etc. These 
156 institutions are maintained at an expense 
of something over three million and a half dol- 
lars per year. 

Finally, there are 47 so-called "spiritual" 
institutions which are engaged in propagating 
in various ways and in various forms a knowl- 
edge of the Bible and a belief in the Christian 
religion. Although the spiritual associations 
represent less than one seventeenth of the total 
number of charitable organizations, nearly one 



346 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

fourth of the total amount of the chanties is 
expended in maintaining them. 

According to the best estimate that can be 
made, the amount of money thus expended is 
not less than fifty millions annually. This does 
not include, either, the sums collected and ex- 
pended by the different churches — the Congre- 
gational, Catholic, and Established churches. 
In two dioceses of the Church of England — 
namely, those of London and Southwark — the 
sums raised in this way amounted to more than 
six hundred thousand dollars. 

My attention was especially attracted by the 
number of shelters and refuges where homeless 
men, women, and children are given temporary 
aid of one kind and another. In addition to 
eight shelters maintained by the Salvation Army 
in different parts of the city, where homeless 
men and women are able to obtain a bed and 
something to eat, there is the asylum for the 
houseless poor, which claims to have given nights' 
lodging during the winter months to 80,000; the 
Free Shelter, in Ratcliffe Street East, which has 
given nights' lodging to 125,000; the Ham Yard 
Soup Kitchen and Hospice, which in 1908-1909 
cared for 343 for an average of sixteen nights; 
the Providence Right Refuge and Home, with 
reports of nearly 2,100 lodgings, suppers, and 
breakfasts every week. 



LIFE OF THE LABOURER IN LONDON 347 

In addition to these there is a considerable 
number of refuges and shelters for various classes 
of persons — for sailors, soldiers, Jews, Asiatics, 
and Africans; for ballet girls; "ladies who, on 
account of their conversion to the Catholic 
faith, are obliged to leave their homes or sit- 
uations"; for "respectable female servants"; 
homeless boys and girls, governesses; "Protes- 
tant servants while they are seeking employment 
in the families of the nobility," and for "young 
women employed in hotels and West End clubs." 

These are but a few of the many different 
homes, lodging houses, and shelters with which 
the city is provided. In most cases it is stated in 
connection with these institutions that vagrants 
are rigidly excluded, and the purpose of most of 
them seems to be to keep respectablevbutiunfortu- 
nate people from going to the public workhouses. 

In addition to the fifty millions and more 
spent in charity, nearly twenty millions more 
is expended by the different boroughs of London 
for relief to the poor in institutions and in 
homes. Altogether, it costs something like sev- 
enty million dollars annually to provide for the 
poor and unfortunate of the city. 

In the Southern States, where nine of the ten 
million Negroes in the United States make their 
homes, practically nothing is spent in charity 
upon the Negro. In two or three states re- 



348 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

formatories have been established, so that 
Negro children arrested for petty crimes may not 
be sent to the chain gangs and confined with 
older and more hardened criminals employed 
in the mines and elsewhere. At the last session 
of the state legislature of Alabama a bill was 
passed providing that the state should take over 
and support a reformatory for coloured children 
which had been established and supported by 
the Negro women of the state. In several of 
the larger Southern cities Young Men's Christian 
Associations have been started which are sup- 
ported by charity, and in certain instances 
hospitals have been established. 

The only purpose for which the Negro has 
asked or received philanthropic aid has been 
for the support of education. The people of 
the United States have been generous in their 
contributions to Negro education. In spite of 
this fact the income of all the Negro colleges, 
industrial schools, and other institutions of so- 
called higher education in the South is not one 
fiftieth part of what is expended every year in 
London in chanty and relief, not for the purpose 
of education, but merely to rescue from worse 
disaster the stranded, the outcasts, and those 
who are already lost.* 



*The annual income of twenty Negro colleges in the United States 
was, in 1908, $804,663. 



LIFE OF THE LABOURER IN LONDON 349 

I find, as most people do, I have no doubt, 
that it is very hard to realize the significance 
of a fact that is stated in mere abstract figures. 
It is only after I have translated these abstrac- 
tions into terms of my own experience that I am 
able to grasp them. That must be my excuse 
here for what may seem a rather far-fetched 
comparison. 

The Negro population of the Southern States 
is at present about nine million. In other 
words, the number of Negroes in the South is 
just about one fourth larger than the population 
of Greater London, which is something over 
seven million. Four fifths of this Southern 
Negro population still live on the plantations 
and in the small towns. 

From time to time thoughtful and interested 
persons — some of them, by the way, English- 
men — have visited the Southern States, talked 
with the white people and looked at the Negroes. 
Then they have gone back and written de- 
spondently, sometimes pessimistically, about the 
Negro problem. I wish some of these writers 
might study the situation of the races in the 
South long enough to determine what it would 
be possible to do there, not with seventy nor 
even fifty, but with one million dollars a year, 
provided that money were used, not for the 
purpose of feeding, sheltering, or protecting the 



350 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

Negro population, for which it is not needed, 
but in educating them; in building up the public 
schools in the country districts; in providing a 
system of high schools, industrial and agri- 
cultural schools, such as exists, for example, in 
Denmark; in extending the demonstration farm- 
ing to all the people on the land, and in en- 
couraging the small colleges to adapt their 
teaching to the actual needs of the people so 
that in the course of time Negro education in 
the South could be gradually organized and 
coordinated into a single coherent system. 

Perhaps I can illustrate in a broad way the 
difference in the situation of the poor man in 
the complex life of a great city like London and 
that of a similar class in the simpler conditions 
of a comparatively rural community, by a 
further comparison. The state of Alabama is 
nearly as large as England and Wales combined. 
It had, in 1900, a little more than one third the 
present population of what is known as "Ad- 
ministrative London," which means a city of 
4,720,729. Of this population there were, on 
an average, 139,916 paupers. In Alabama, with 
a population in 1900 of 1,828,696, there were, 
in 1905, 771 paupers in almshouses, of whom 414 
were white and 357 Negroes. In other words, 
while in London there were nearly three paupers 
for every one thousand of the population, in 



LIFE OF THE LABOURER IN LONDON 351 

Alabama there were a little more than four 
paupers for every ten thousand of the popula- 
tion. This does not include the persons con- 
fined in asylums or those who are assisted in 
their homes. In Alabama the number of 
paupers cared for in this way is very small. As 
compared with the 2,000 charitable institutions 
in London, there were twenty such institutions in 
Alabama in 1904. Three of these, a hospital, 
an old folks' home and orphan asylum, and a 
school for the deaf and blind were for Negroes. 

I have quoted these figures to show the con- 
trast between conditions in a large city and a 
comparatively rural community. But Alabama 
contains three cities of considerable size, which 
may account for a fairly large number of its 
paupers, so that I suspect that if the compari- 
son were strictly carried out it would be found 
that pauperism is a good deal more of a city 
disease than it seems. 

The institutions in London to which I have 
referred, whether managed by private phi- 
lanthropy or by the public, are mainly main- 
tained for the sake of those who have already 
fallen in the struggle for existence. They are 
for the sick and wounded, so to speak. In 
recent years a movement has been steadily 
gaining ground which seeks to get at the source 
of this city disease, and by improving the con- 



352 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

ditions of city life do away to some extent with 
the causes of it. 

The work of reorganizing the life of the poorer 
classes in London seems to have made a be- 
ginning some fifty or sixty years ago. The 
condition of the working population at that 
time has been described in the following words 
by Mr. Sidney Webb, who has made a profound 
study of the condition of the labouring classes 
in London: 

Two thirds of the whole child population was growing up 
not only practically without schooling or religious influences of 
any kind, but also indescribably brutal and immoral; living amid 
the filth of vilely overcrowded courts, unprovided with water 
supply or sanitary conveniences, existing always at the lowest 
level of physical health, and constantly decimated by disease; 
incessantly under temptation by the flaring gin palaces which 
alone relieve the monotony of the mean streets to which they 
were doomed; graduating almost inevitably into vice and crime 
amid the now incredible street life of an unpoliced metropolis.* 

The first thing attempted was to provide 
public education for those who were not able 
to attend private schools, and, as one writer 
says, " rescue the children of the abyss." It 
was in this rescue work that England's public 
schools had their origin. These schools, begun 
in this way, steadily gained and broadened 
until now London has an elaborate system 
of continuation, trade and technical schools, 

"London Education, Nineteenth Century, October 1903, p. 563. 



LIFE OF THE LABOURER IN LONDON 353 

culminating in the reorganized University of 
London. This system is by no means per- 
fected; it still is in process, but it gives the out- 
lines of a broad and generous educational plan, 
equal in conception and organization at least to 
the needs of the largest city in the world. 

London already has, for example, 327 night 
schools, with 127,130 pupils, in which young 
men and women who have left the day schools 
may continue their studies at night or perfect 
themselves in some branch of their trade. 

Cooking, household management, laundry 
work, and iron work are taught in more than 
half the elementary schools of London. The 
London County Council supports fourteen 
schools which give instruction in the arts and 
crafts, and in the trades. In addition, the 
Government lends its aid to something like 
sixty-one other institutions, with an attendance 
of over 6,000, in which technical and trade 
education of some kind is given. A number of 
these schools, like the Shoreditch Technical 
Institute and the Brixton School of Building, 
are devoted to a single trade or group of allied 
trades. In the Shoreditch Institute boys are 
fitted for the furniture trade. Half their time 
is given to academic studies and half to work 
in the trade. At the Brixton School instruc- 
tion is given in bricklaying and masonry, plumb- 



354 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

ing, painting, architecture, building, and sur- 
veying. In other schools pupils are given in- 
struction in photo-engraving and lithographing, 
in fine needlework and engraving, bookbinding, 
and in many other crafts requiring a high grade 
of intelligence and skill. 

With the growth of these schools the idea has 
been gaining ground that it is not sufficient to 
rescue those who, through misfortune or disease, 
are unable to support themselves; that on the 
contrary, instead of waiting until an individual 
has actually fallen a victim to what I have called 
the "city disease," measures of prevention be 
taken against pauperism as against other diseases. 

Along with this changed point of view has 
come the insight that the efficiency of the nation 
as a whole depends upon its ability to make the 
most of the capacities of the whole population. 

"Indeed," as Mr. Webb, the writer I have 
already quoted, says, "we now see with painful 
clearness that we have in the long run, for the 
maintenance of our preeminent industrial posi- 
tion in the world, nothing to depend on except 
the brains of our people. Public education 
has insensibly, therefore, come to be regarded, 
not as a matter of philanthropy, undertaken 
for the sake of the children benefited, but, as a 
matter of national concern, undertaken in the 
interest of the community as a whole." 



LIFE OF THE LABOURER IN LONDON 355 

After the schools, the next direction in which 
an attempt was made to improve the condition 
of the poor in London was in the matter of hous- 
ing. The Board of Works first and the London 
County Council afterward began some forty 
years ago buying vast areas in the crowded 
parts of London, clearing them of the disreput- 
able buildings, and then offering them for sale 
again to persons who would agree to erect on 
them sanitary dwellings for the working classes. 
The Metropolitan Board of Works, for example, 
purchased forty-two acres in different parts of 
the city for clearance. After the buildings had 
been torn down and the sites resold, it was 
estimated that the net cost would be about 
£1,320,619 or about $6,603,395. There lived on 
this area 22,872 persons, so that the net cost 
of cleaning up this area and moving the popula- 
tion into better quarters was something like 
$281 for each individual inhabitant. 

Then the London County Council took up 
the work and it decided to begin building its 
own houses. Finally, a law was passed that 
the buildings so created should rent for more 
than the rents prevailing in the district and 
should pay the cost of maintenance, 3 per cent. 
on the capital invested. 

On these terms the Metropolitan Board of 
Works and the London County Council have 



356 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

cleared in various parts of Central London an 
area of nearly eighty-six acres, containing a 
population of 41,584, at a cost which averages 
about $250 per person. On the property thus 
acquired the London County Council had in 
1907 erected 8,223 tenements with 22,331 rooms. 
At this time, 1907, there were projected dwell- 
ings containing a total of 28,000 rooms, which, 
with those already erected, make a total of 
over 50,000 rooms. These tenements rent 
on an average of about 70 cents a week per 
room, so that the city of Greater London 
has an annual income of nearly $760,000 from 
its rents alone, on which the city earned 
in 1901, after all charges were paid, a profit 
of $10,000. 

At first the County Council merely sought 
to replace the buildings which it removed, and 
the new buildings occupied the site of the older 
ones. On or near Boundary Street, in the neigh- 
bourhood of Bethnal Green, twenty-two acres 
were cleared of slums and covered with model 
dwellings, provided with wash houses, club 
rooms and every moden appliance for health 
and comfort. The sad thing about it was that 
after the buildings were completed and occupied 
it was found that only eleven of the former in- 
habitants remained. They had poured down 
into slums in the older part of the city and in- 



LIFE OF THE LABOURER IN LONDON 357 

creased the population in those already over- 
crowded regions. 

Meanwhile, in other parts of the country 
private enterprise and private philanthropy 
had gone in advance of the London County 
Council. Outside of Birmingham and Liver- 
pool garden cities had been erected in which 
every family was provided with an acre of land, 
on some of which men employed in the factories, 
when they were not at work, increased their 
earnings in some instances as much as £50, or 
#250, a year. 

Then the County Council began to acquire 
tramways radiating out in every direction into 
the suburbs. At the present time the city owns 
something over a hundred miles of tramway 
within the city, and of the 300 miles or more in 
Greater London the majority is either owned by 
London or the suburban boroughs. 

At the ends of these lines the London County 
Council, and more frequently private individu- 
als, have erected model dwellings on a large scale 
and are thus gradually moving the city popula- 
tion into the country. 

In the meantime much has been done in 
recent years to increase the number of play- 
grounds and breathing spaces, to supply bath- 
rooms, wash houses and other conveniences 
which make it possible to keep the city and 



358 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

people in a healthful and sanitary condition. 
In many of the principal streets in London I 
noticed signs directing the people to public baths 
which were located somewhere underneath the 
street. The different boroughs contributed in 
1907 $738,545 in taxes to support these public 
baths and bath houses, and at the same time the 
people of London paid over $400,000 for bath 
tickets and $85,000 for laundry tickets in order 
to make use of these public conveniences. 

Inner London, not including suburbs, has 
now an area of 6,588 acres in parks large and 
small, upon which the city has expended a 
capital of $9,125,910 and upon which it expends 
annually the sum of $548,065 or thereabout. 

Now, the thing that strikes me about all this 
is that these vast sums of money which London 
has spent in clearing up its slums, in providing 
decent houses, wider streets, breathing spaces, 
bath houses, swimming pools, and washrooms 
have been spent mainly on sunshine, air, and 
water, things which any one may have without 
cost in the country. 

I visited some of these wash houses and saw 
hundreds of women who had come in from the 
surrounding neighbourhood to do their week's 
washing. They were paying by the hour for 
the use of the municipal washtubs and water, 
but I am sure they were not any better provided 



LIFE OF THE LABOURER IN LONDON 359 

for in this respect than the coloured women of 
the South who go down on sunshiny days to 
the brook to do their washing, boiling their 
clothes in a big iron kettle. I saw the boys in 
some of the swimming pools, but I did not see 
any of them that seemed happier than the boy 
who goes off to the brook with his hook and 
line and by the way takes a plunge in an old- 
fashioned swimming hole. 

Thus it is that London seems to have found 
that the best if not the only way to solve the 
city problem is by transporting its population 
to the country, settling them in colonies in the 
suburbs, where they may obtain, at an enormous 
expense, what four fifths of the Negro popula- 
tion in this country already have and what they 
can be taught to value and keep if some of the 
money that is now expended or which will be 
expended on the city slums were spent in giving 
the people on the farm some of the advantages 
which the city offers, the principal one of which 
is a chance for an education. 



CHAPTER XIX 

JOHN BURNS AND THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN IN 
LONDON 

I HAD heard a good deal, from time to 
time, about John Burns before I went 
to Europe, and when I reached Lon- 
don I took advantage of the first opportunity 
that offered to make my acquaintance with him 
a personal one. This meeting was a special 
good fortune to me at the time because, as I 
already knew, there is, in all probability, no 
one in England who better understands the 
hopes, ambitions, and the prospects of the 
labouring classes than the Rt. Hon. John Burns, 
President of the Local Government Board, 
himself the first labouring man to become a 
member of the British Cabinet. 

John Burns was born in poverty and went 
to work at the age of ten. He had known what 
it is to wander the streets of London for weeks 
and months looking for work. He had an 
experience of that kind once after he had lost 
his job because he made a Socialistic speech. 
Having learned by experience the life of that 

360 



JOHN BURNS 361 

industrial outcast, the casual labourer, he or- 
ganized in 1889 the great dock labourers' strike, 
which brought together into the labour unions 
100,000 starving and disorganized labourers 
who had previously been shut out from the 
protection of organized labour. Besides that, 
he has been an agitator; was for years a marked 
man, and at one time gained for himself the 
name of the "man with the red flag." He has 
been several times arrested for making speeches, 
and has once been imprisoned for three months 
on the charge of rioting. 

Meanwhile he had become the idol of the 
working masses and even won the admiration 
and respect of the leaders of public opinion. 
He was elected in 1889 to the first London 
County Council, where he worked side by side 
with such distinguished men as Frederic Har- 
rison and Lord Rosebery. He was chosen a 
member of parliament in 1890, where he became 
distinguished for the store of practical infor- 
mation which he accumulated during his eigh- 
teen years of practical experience in the London 
County Council. 

When he was twenty-one years of age Mr. 
Burns went as an engineer to Africa, where he 
spent a year among the swamps of the Lower 
Niger, occasionally fighting alligators and de- 
voting his leisure to the study of political 



362 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

economy. When he returned he spent the 
money he had saved in Africa in six months of 
travel and study in Europe. 

Speaking of what he learned in Africa, Mr. 
Burns once said: "You talk of savagery and 
misery in heathen lands, but from my own ex- 
perience I can tell you that there is more of all 
these, and more degradation of women, in the 
slums of London than you will see on the West 
Coast of Africa." 

He has had a wider experience than most 
men with mobs, for he has not only led them, 
but in 1900 he defended himself with a cricket 
bat for two days in his home on Lavender Hill, 
Battersea, against a mob said to number 10,000 
which hurled stones through the windows and 
tried to batter down the door of his house be- 
cause he had denounced the Boer War in par- 
liament. 

In 1906, after he had been successful in writ- 
ing something like one hundred labour laws into 
the acts of parliament, he accepted the position 
of President of Local Government and then 
became, as I have said, the first labouring man 
to accept a place in the British Cabinet. 

In reply to the criticisms which were offered 
when he accepted this high and responsible 
position in the government, Mr. Burns said: 
"I had to choose whether, for the next ten 






JOHN BURNS 363 

years, I should indulge, perhaps, in the futility 
of faction, possibly in the impotence of intrigue, 
or whether I should accept an office which in 
our day and generation I can make useful of 
good works." I have noted this statement 
because this is a choice which most reformers 
and agitators have to make sooner or later. 

He recognized, as he said, that "the day of 
the agitator was declining and that of the ad- 
ministrator had begun," and he did not shrink 
from accepting a position where he became re- 
sponsible for administering laws he had helped 
to make. In his present position as the head 
of the Local Government Board Mr. Burns is 
probably doing more than any other man to 
improve the situation of the poor man in Lon- 
don and in the other large cities of England. 

It is a rare thing for a man who began life 
in poverty to find himself in middle life in a 
position of such power and usefulness as the 
head of one great branch of the British Gov- 
ernment occupies. It is still more remark- 
able, however, that a man who began life as an 
agitator, the representative of the unemployed, 
the most helpless and unfortunate class in the 
community, should find himself, a comparatively 
few years later, charged with the task of 
carrying into effect the reforms which he had 
preached from the prisoner's dock in a police 



364 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

court. It is all the more fortunate for England 
that the Government has found a man with 
these qualifications, who has at the same time 
the training and qualities of a statesman, to 
carry the reforms into effect. As Mr. Burns 
himself once said: " Depend upon it, there are 
no such places for making a public man as 
Pentonville Prison and the London County 
Council." 

To me, however, the most surprising thing 
about it all is that a man with his history and 
qualifications should have found his way, by 
the ordinary methods of politics, into a position 
he is so well fitted to fill. It suggests to me 
that, in spite of all the misery that one still 
may see in London, in England, at least, there 
is hope for the man farthest down. 

It is not my purpose in this chapter to write 
a biography of John Burns, but rather to de- 
scribe what I saw, under his direction, of what 
has already been done in London in the work 
of "reconstruction," to which I have already 
referred. It seemed to me, however, that it was 
not out of place to say something, by way of 
introduction, in regard to the man who is, 
perhaps, as much if not more than any one 
else responsible for the work now going on, and 
whose life is connected in a peculiar way with 
that part of the city I had opportunity to visit 



JOHN BURNS 365 

and with the improvements that have been 
made there. 

John Burns was born and still lives in Bat- 
tersea, a quarter of the city inhabited, for the 
most part, by artisans, mechanics, and labourers 
of various kinds, with a sprinkling of gypsy 
pedlers and the very poor. Battersea is di- 
rectly across the river from, and in plain sight 
of, the Parliament Buildings, and there is a 
story to the effect that, as he was coming home 
one winter night, helping his mother carry 
home the washing by which she supported her- 
self and family, they two stopped within the 
shadow of those buildings to rest. Turning to 
his mother the boy said: "Mother, if ever I 
have health and strength no mother shall have 
to work as you do. " 

John Burns has health and strength, and is 
now making a brave effort to keep that promise 
to his mother. Aside from Colonel Roosevelt, 
I do not think I ever saw a man who seemed his 
equal in vigour of mind and body; who seemed 
able to compress so much into a short space of 
time; or one who goes at the task before him 
with a greater zest. In all England I do not 
believe there is a man who works harder, ac- 
complishes more for. the good of his country 
and the world, or one who is happier in the work 
he is doing. 



366 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

I found him late in August, when every 
one else connected with the government had 
left London on their vacation, buried deep in 
the details and concerns of his office, but chock- 
full of energy and enthusiasm. 

What John Burns is doing, and the spirit 
in which he is doing it, will, perhaps, appear 
in the course of my description of a trip which I 
took with him through his own district of 
Battersea and the region adjoining it in order 
to see what the London County Council is 
doing there to make the life of the poor man 
better. I am sorry that I will not be able to 
describe in detail all that I saw on that trip, 
because we covered in a short time so much 
ground, and saw so many different things, that 
it was not until I had returned to my hotel, and 
had an opportunity to study out the route of 
that journey, that I was able to get any definite 
idea of the direction in which we had gone or 
of the connection and general plan which under- 
lay the whole scheme of the improvements we 
had seen. 

I think it was about two o'clock in the after- 
noon when we left the offices of the Local Gov- 
ernment Board. Mr. Burns insisted that, be- 
fore we started, I should see something of the 
Parliament Buildings, and he promised to 
act as my guide. This hasty trip through the 






JOHN BURNS 367 

Parliament Buildings served to show me that 
John Burns, although he had entered political 
life as a Socialist, has a profound reverence for 
all the historic traditions and a very intimate 
knowledge of English history. I shall not soon 
forget the eloquent and vivid manner in which 
he summoned up for me, as we passed through 
Westminster Hall, on the way to the House of 
Commons, some of the great historical scenes 
and events which had taken place in that ancient 
and splendid room. I was impressed not only 
by the familiarity which he showed with all the 
associations of the place, but I was thrilled by 
the enthusiasm with which he spoke of and de- 
scribed them. It struck me as very strange that 
the same John Burns once known as "the man 
with the red flag," who had been imprisoned 
for leading a mob of workmen against the 
police, should be quoting history with all the 
enthusiasm of a student and a scholar. 

In the course of our journey we passed through 
a small strip of Chelsea. I remember that 
among the other places we passed he pointed 
out the home of Thomas Carlyle. I found that 
he was just as familiar with names and deeds 
of all the great literary persons who had lived 
in that quarter of London as he was with the 
political history. 

When he afterward told me that he had had 



368 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

very little education in school, because he had 
been compelled to go to work when he was ten 
years of age, I asked him how he had since 
found time, in the course of his busy life, to 
gain the wide knowledge of history and litera- 
ture which he evidently possessed. 

"You see," he replied, with a quiet smile, 
"I earned my living for a time as a candle 
maker and I have burned a good many candles 
at night ever since. " 

Mr. Burns had promised to show me, within 
the space of a few hours, examples of the sort 
of work which is now going on in every part of 
London. A few years ago, on the site of an 
ancient prison, the London County Council 
erected several blocks of workingmen's tene- 
ments. These were, I believe, the first, or 
nearly the first, of the tenements erected by the 
city in the work of clearing away unsanitary 
areas and providing decent homes for the work- 
ing classes. 

It was to these buildings, in which a popu- 
lation of about 4,000 persons live, that we went 
first. The buildings are handsome brick struc- 
tures, well lighted, with wide, open, brick-paved 
courts between the rows of houses, so that each 
block looked like a gigantic letter H with the 
horizontal connecting line left out. 

Of course, these buildings were, as some one 



JOHN BURNS 369 

said, little more than barracks compared with 
the houses that are now being erected for labour- 
ing people in some of the London suburbs, but 
they are clean and wholesome and, to any one 
familiar with the narrow, grimy streets in the 
East End of London, it was hard to believe that 
they stood in the midst of a region which a few 
years ago had been a typical London slum. 

A little farther on we crossed the river and 
entered what Mr. Burns referred to as "my own 
district," Battersea, where he was born and 
where he has lived and worked all his life, ex- 
cept for one year spent as an engineer in Nigeria, 
Africa. 

The great breathing place for the people of 
this region is Battersea Park, and as we sped 
along the edge of this beautiful green space, 
stopping to look for a moment at the refresh- 
ment booths on the cricket grounds, or to speak 
to a group of well- dressed boys going from school 
to the playgrounds, Mr. Burns interspersed his 
information about workmen's wages, the price 
of rents, and the general improvement of the 
labouring classes with comment on the historic 
associations of the places we passed. Where 
Battersea Park now stands there was formerly a 
foul and unwholesome swamp. Near here the 
Duke of Wellington had fought a duel with the 
Earl of Winchelsea, and a little farther up 



370 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

Julius Caesar, nearly two thousand years ago, 
forded the river with one of his legions. 

It was a happy and novel experience to ob- 
serve the pleasure which Mr. Burns took in 
pointing out the improvement in the people, in 
the dwellings, and in the life of the people gener- 
ally, and to note, in turn, the familiar and cheer- 
ful way with which all sorts of people we met on 
the streets greeted him as we passed. 

" Hello! Johnny Burns," a group of schoolboys 
would call as we went by. Once we passed by a 
group of some fifteen or twenty workingwomen 
sitting in one of the refreshment booths, drink- 
ing their afternoon tea and, apparently, hold- 
ing a neighbourhood meeting of some kind or 
other. As they recognized the man who, as 
member of the London County Council, had 
been responsible for most of the improvements 
that had been made in the homes and surround- 
ings in which they lived, they stood up and 
waved their handkerchiefs, and even attempted 
a faint and feminine " hurrah for Johnny Burns, " 
the member from Battersea. 

There are 150,000 people in Battersea, but 
Mr. Burns seemed to be acquainted with every 
one of them, and when he wanted to show me 
the inside of some of the new "County Council 
houses," as they are called, did not hesitate to 
knock at the nearest door, where we were gladly 



JOHN BURNS 371 

welcomed. The people seemed to be just as 
proud of their new houses, and of Mr. Burns, as 
he was of them. 

The houses which we visited were, some of 
them, no more than three or four rooms, but 
each one of them was as neat and wholesome as 
if it had been a palace. They were very com- 
pactly built, but provided with every sort of 
modern convenience, including electric lights 
and baths. 

There were houses of five and six rooms in- 
tended for clerks and small business men, which 
rented for a pound a week, and there were 
cheaper houses, for ordinary labouring people, 
which rented for two dollars per week. These 
houses are built directly under the direction of 
the London County Council, and are expected 
to pay 3 per cent, upon the investment, after 
completion. 

The London County Council was not the 
first to make the experiment of building decent 
and substantial houses for the labouring classes. 
Some thirty years before, on what is known as 
the Shaftbury Park Estate, 1,200 houses, which 
provide homes for eleven thousand people, were 
erected and the investment had been made to 
pay. 

I looked down the long lanes of little vine- 
covered buildings which make up this estate. 



372 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

It seemed as if some great army had settled on 
the land and built permanent quarters. 

These labour colonies were interesting, not 
merely for the improvement they had made in 
the lives of a large section of the people living 
in this part of the city, but as the forerunner of 
those garden cities which private enterprise has 
erected at places like Port Sunlight, near Liver- 
pool; Bourneville, in the outskirts of Birming- 
ham, and at Letchworth, thirty-four miles 
from London. 

Not far from Battersea Park, and in a part 
of the city which was formerly inhabited almost 
wholly by the very poor, we visited the public 
baths and a public washhouse where, during the 
course of a year, 42,000 women come to wash 
their clothes, paying at the rate of three cents 
an hour for the use of the municipal tubs and 
hot water. Children pay a penny or two cents 
for the use of the public baths. The building 
is also provided with a gymnasium for the use 
of the children in winter, and contains a hall 
which is rented to workingmen's clubs at a nom- 
inal price. 

What pleased me most was to see the orderly 
way in which the children had learned to conduct 
themselves in these places, which, as was evident, 
had become not merely places for recreation, 
but at the same time schools of good manners. 









JOHN BURNS 373 

We passed on the streets groups of neatly 
dressed, well-bred looking boys, with their books 
slung over their arms, going home from school 
or making their way to the park. Mr. Burns 
was delighted at the sight of these clean-cut, 
manly looking fellows. 

"Look at those boys, Mr. Washington," he 
would exclaim, as he pointed proudly to one or 
another of these groups. "Isn't that doing 
pretty well for the proletariat?" 

Then he would leap out of the automobile, 
before the driver could stop, put his arm around 
the boy nearest him and, in a moment, come 
back triumphant with the confirmation of his 
statement that the boy's father was, as he had 
said, only a small clerk or a letter carrier, or, 
perhaps, the son of a common labourer, a navvy. 

When I contrasted the appearance of these 
well-dressed and well-behaved boys with some 
of those I had seen elsewhere, with the chil- 
dren who attend the so-called "ragged" schools, 
for example, I understood and shared his en- 
thusiasm. 

From Battersea Park we went to Clapham 
Common and, as we were speeding along 
through what appeared to be a quarter of well- 
to-do artisans' homes, Mr. Burns nodded casu- 
ally in the direction of a little vine-clad cottage 
and said: 



374 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

"That is where I live." 

Although Mr. Burns now occupies one of the 
highest positions in the British Government, 
in which he has a salary of $10,000 a year, he 
has not yet assumed the high hat and the long- 
tailed coat which are the recognized uniform in 
London of a gentleman. On the contrary, he 
wears the same blue reefer coat and soft felt 
hat, speaks the same language, lives in the same 
style, and is apparently in every respect the 
same man that he was when he was living on the 
$25 a week guaranteed him by the Battersea 
Labour League when he entered parliament. 
He is still a labouring man and proud of the class 
to which he belongs. 

It was at Clapham Common, although Mr. 
Burns did not mention this fact, that he was 
arrested for the first time, away back in 1878, 
for making a public speech. It was somewhere 
in this region also, if I remember rightly, that 
Mr. Burns pointed out to us a private estate on 
which 3,000 houses of the cheaper class had been 
erected. 

"And mind you, there is no public house," 
said Mr. Burns. Instead he showed us a brand- 
new temperance billiard hall which had been 
erected to compete with, and take the place of, 
the bar-rooms which have disappeared. 

At Lower Tooting, an estate of some thirty- 



JOHN BURNS 375 

eight acres, the London County Council is 
building outright a city of something like 5,ooo 
inhabitants, laying out the streets, building the 
houses, even putting a tidy little flower garden 
in each separate front door yard. It was as if 
the London County Council had gone to playing 
dolls, so completely planned and perfectly car- 
ried out in every detail is this little garden city. 

Mr. Burns, who has all his life been an advo- 
cate of temperance, although he had once served 
as pot-boy in a public house, pointed out here, as 
he did elsewhere, that there was no public house. 

In the building of this little paradise all the 
architectural and engineering problems had in- 
deed been solved. There remained, however, 
the problem of human nature, and the question 
that I asked myself was: Will these people be 
able to live up to their surroundings ? 

It is fortunate, in this connection, that in 
Mr. Burns the inhabitants have a leader 
who dares to speak plainly to them of their 
faults as well as their virtues and who is able, 
at the same time, to inspire them with an am- 
bition and enthusiasm for the better life which is 
opened to them. Engineering and architecture 
cannot do everything, but education, leader- 
ship of the right sort, may complete what these 
have begun. 

At Warden Street and Lydden Road, on our 



376 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

way back to the city, we stopped to look for a 
moment at what Mr. Burns said was the most 
wretched part of the population in that quarter 
of the city. The houses were two-story dwell- 
ings, with the sills flush with the pavement, 
in front of which groups of lounging idle men 
and women stood or squatted on the pavement. 
A portion of the street was given up to gypsy 
vans, and the whole population was made up, as 
I learned, of pedlers and pushcart venders, a 
class of people who, in the very centre of civili- 
zation, manage somehow to maintain a nomadic 
and half-barbarous existence, wandering from 
one place to another with the seasons, living 
from hand to mouth, working irregularly and 
not more than half the time. 

A little farther on we passed by the Price 
candle factory, "where I began work at a dollar 
a week," said Mr. Burns in passing. A group 
of workmen were just coming from the factory 
as we passed, and the men recognized Mr. 
Burns and shouted to him as he passed. 

Then we drove on back across the Chelsea 
Bridge and along the river to the Parliament 
Buildings again. "Now," said Mr. Burns at 
the end of our journey, "you have seen a sam- 
ple of what London is doing for its labouring 
population. If you went further you would 
see more, but little that is new or different." 



CHAPTER XX 

THE FUTURE OF THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

UPON my arrival in London I found my- 
self, at the end of my journey, once 
more at my point of departure. A 
few days later, October 9th, to be precise, I 
sailed from Liverpool for New York. I had been 
less than seven weeks in Europe, but it seemed 
to me that I had been away for a year. My 
head was full of strange and confused impres- 
sions and I was reminded of the words of the 
traveller who, after he had crossed Europe from 
London to Naples, and had visited faithfully 
all the museums and neglected none of the 
regular " sights," wrote to friends he had visited 
in Europe a letter full of appreciation, conclud- 
ing with the remark: "Well, I have seen a great 
deal and learned a great deal, and I thank God it 
is all over" 

It occurs to me that the readers who have fol- 
lowed me thus far in my narrative may find 
themselves at the conclusion of this book in 
somewhat the same situation as myself at the 
end of my journey. In that case it will, per- 

377 



378 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

haps, not be out of place to take advantage of 
this concluding chapter to do for them as well 
as I am able what I tried to do for myself during 
my hours of leisure on the voyage home — 
namely, make a little clearer the relation of all 
that I had seen and learned to the problem of 
the Negro and The Man Farthest Down. 

I have touched, in the course of these chap- 
ters, upon many phases of life. I have had 
something to say, for example, in regard to 
the poverty, education, Socialism, and the race 
problems of Europe, since all these different 
matters are connected in one way or another 
with the subject and purpose of my journey and 
this book. 

In attempting to add the moral to my story, 
however, and state in general terms the upshot 
of it all, I find myself at a disadvantage. I can, 
perhaps, best explain what I mean by recalling 
the fact that I was born a slave and since I be- 
came free have been so busy with the task im- 
mediately in front of me that I have never had 
time to think out my experiences and formulate 
my ideas in general terms. In fact, almost all 
that I know about the problems of other races 
and other peoples I have learned in seeking a 
solution and a way out for my own people. For 
that reason I should have done better perhaps 
to leave to some one with more learning and more 



THE FUTURE 379 

leisure than I happen to possess the task of 
writing about the Underman in Europe. In 
fact I would have done so if I had not believed 
that in making this journey I should gain some 
insight and, perhaps, be able to throw some new 
light upon the situation of my own people in 
America. Indeed, I confess that I should never 
have taken the time — brief as it was — to make 
this long journey if I had not believed it was 
going to have some direct relation to the work 
which I have been trying to do for the people 
of my race in America. 

In this, let me add, I was not disappointed. 
As a matter of fact, if there was one thing more 
than another, in all my European experiences, 
which was impressed upon my mind, it was the 
fact that the position of the Negro in America, 
both in slavery and in freedom, has not been so 
exceptional as it has frequently seemed. While 
there are wide differences between the situation 
of the people in the lower levels of life in Europe 
and the Negro in America, there are still many 
points of resemblance, and the truth is that the 
man farthest down in Europe has much in com- 
mon with the man at the bottom in America. 

For example, the people at the bottom in 
Europe have been, in most cases, for the greater 
part of their history at least, like the Negroes 
in America, a subject people, not slaves, but 



3 8o THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

bondmen or serfs, at any rate a disadvantaged 
people. 

In most cases the different under-classes in 
Europe only gained their freedom in the course 
of the last century. Since that time they have 
been engaged in an almost ceaseless struggle to 
obtain for themselves the political privileges that 
formerly belonged to the upper classes alone. 

Even in those places where the man at the 
bottom has gained political privileges resembling 
in most respects those of the classes at the top he 
finds, as the Negro in America has found, that 
he has only made a beginning, and the real 
work of emancipation remains to be done. The 
English labourer, for example, has had political 
freedom for a longer period of time than is true 
of any other representative of this class in 
Europe. Notwithstanding this fact, as things 
are, he can only in rare instances buy and own 
the land on which he lives. The labouring 
people of England live, for the most part, 
herded together with millions of others of their 
class in the slums of great cities, where air and 
water are luxuries. They are dependent upon 
some other nation for their food supplies, for 
butter, bread, and meat. And then, as a fur- 
ther consequence of the way they are compelled 
to live, the masses of the people find themselves 
part of an economic arrangement or system 



THE FUTURE 381 

which is so vast and complicated that they can 
neither comprehend nor control it. 

The result is that the English labourer, of 
whose independence the world has heard so 
much, is, in many respects, more dependent 
than any other labouring class in Europe. This 
is due not to the fact that the English labourer 
lacks political rights, but to the fact that he 
lacks economic opportunities — opportunities to 
buy land and opportunities to labour; to own 
his own home, to keep a garden and raise his 
own food. 

The Socialists have discovered that the inde- 
pendence of the labouring classes has been un- 
dermined as a result of the growth of factories and 
city life, and believe they have found a remedy. 

What the Socialists would actually do in 
England or elsewhere, provided they should 
manage to get into power, is difficult to say, 
because, as my experience in Europe has taught 
me, there are almost as many kinds of Socialists 
as there are kinds of people. The real old-fash- 
ioned Socialists, those who still look forward 
to some great social catastrophe which will put 
an end to the present regime, believe it will 
then be possible to use the political power of 
the masses to reorganize society in a way to give 
every individual an economic opportunity equal 
to that of every other. 



382 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

Taking human beings as we find them, I 
have never been able to see how this was going 
to be brought about in precisely the way out- 
lined in the Socialist programme. Some in- 
dividuals will be good for one thing, some for 
another, and there will always be, I suppose, 
a certain number who will not be good for any- 
thing. As they have different capacities, so 
they will have different opportunities. Some 
will want to do one thing and some another, 
and some individuals and some people, like 
the Jews for example, will know how to make 
their disadvantages their opportunities and so 
get the best of the rest of the world, no matter 
how things are arranged. 

I have referred to the Socialists and the 
revolution they propose not because I wish 
to oppose their doctrines, which I confess I do 
not wholly understand, but because it seemed 
to me that, as I went through Europe and 
studied conditions, I could see the evidences 
of a great, silent revolution already in full 
progress. And this revolution to which I 
refer is touching and changing the lives of those 
who are at the bottom, particularly those in the 
remote farming communities, from which the 
lowest class of labourers in the city is con- 
stantly recruited. 

Let me illustrate what I mean: Under the 



THE FUTURE 383 

old system in Europe — the feudal system, or 
whatever else it may at various times have been 
called — civilization began at the top. There 
were a few people who were free. They had 
all the wealth, the power, and the learning in 
their hands, or at their command. When any- 
thing was done it was because they wished it or 
because they commanded it. In order to give 
them this freedom and secure to them this 
power it was necessary that vast numbers of 
other people should live in ignorance, without 
any knowledge of, or share in, any but the petty 
life of the estate or the community to which 
they belonged. They were not permitted to 
move from the spot in which they were born, 
without the permission of their masters. It 
was, in their case, almost a crime to think. It 
was the same system, in a very large degree, 
as that which existed in the Southern States 
before the war, with the exception that the 
serfs in Europe were white, while the slaves 
in the Southern States were black. 

In Europe to-day the great problem to which 
statesmen are giving their thought and atten- 
tion is not how to hold the masses of the people 
down but how to lift them up; to make them 
more efficient in their labour and give them a 
more intelligent share and interest in the life 
of the community and state of which they are 



384 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

a part. Everywhere in Europe the idea is 
gaining ground and influence that the work of 
civilization must begin at the bottom instead 
of at the top. 

The great medium for bringing about these 
changes is the school. In every part of Europe 
which I visited I was impressed with the multi- 
tude of schools of various kinds which are 
springing up to meet the new demand. The 
movement began earlier and has gone farther 
in Denmark than it has elsewhere, and the 
remarkable development of Danish country 
life has been the result. What has been accom- 
plished in Denmark, through the medium of the 
country high schools, and in Germany, through 
the universities and technical training schools, 
is being industriously imitated elsewhere. 

In England I found that people were saying 
that the reason why German manufactures 
had been able to compete so successfully with 
the English products was because Germany had 
the advantage of better schools. In Germany 
I found that the German army, organized in 
the first instance for^he national defence, is 
now looked upon as a great national school, 
in which the masses of the people get an edu- 
cation and discipline which, it is claimed, are 
gradually raising the industrial efficiency of the 
nation. 



THE FUTURE 385 

There, as elsewhere, education is seeking to 
reach and touch every class and every individual 
of every class in the community. The deaf, 
the blind, the defectives of every description 
are now beginning to receive industrial edu- 
cation fitting them for trades in which they 
will be more useful to the community and more 
independent than it was possible for them to be 
when no attempt was made to fit them for 
any place in the life of the community. 

The effect of this movement, or revolution, 
as I have called it, is not to "tear down and 
level up" in order to bring about an artificial 
equality, but to give every individual a chance 
"to make good," to determine for himself his 
place and position in the community by the 
character and quality of the service he is able 
to perform. 

One effect of this change in point of view 
which I have described is that to-day there is 
hardly any one thing in which the people of 
Europe are more concerned than in the progress 
and future of the man farthest down. 

In all that I have written in the preceding 
chapters I have sought to emphasize, in the 
main, two things: first, that behind all the 
movements which have affected the masses of 
the people, Socialism or nationalism, emigration, 
the movements for the reorganization of city 



386 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

and country life, there has always been the 
Underman, groping his way upward, struggling 
to rise; second, that the effect of all that has 
been done to lift the man at the bottom, or to 
encourage him to lift himself, has been to raise 
the level of every man above him. 

If it is true, as I have so often said, that one 
man cannot hold another down in the ditch 
without staying down in the ditch with him, 
it is just as true that, in helping the man who 
is down to rise, the man who is up is freeing 
himself from a burden that would else drag 
him down. It is because the world seems to 
realize this fact more and more that, beyond 
and above all local and temporary difficulties, the 
future of the man farthest down looks bright. 

And now at the conclusion of my search for 
the man farthest down in Europe let me con- 
fess that I did not succeed in finding him. I 
did not succeed in reaching any place in Europe 
where conditions were so bad that I did not 
hear of other places, which friends advised me 
to visit, where conditions were a great deal 
worse. My own experience was, in fact, very 
much like that of a certain gentleman who 
came South some years ago to study the con- 
dition of the Negro people. He had heard 
that in many parts of the South the Negro 
was gradually sinking back into something like 



THE FUTURE 387 

African savagery, and he was particularly 
desirous of finding a well-defined example of 
this relapse into barbarism. He started out 
with high hopes and a very considerable fund 
of information as to what he might expect to 
find and as to the places where he might hope 
to find it. Everywhere he went in his search, 
however, he found that he had arrived a few 
years too late. He found at every place he 
visited people who were glad to tell him the 
worst there was to be known about the coloured 
people; some were even kind enough to show 
what they thought was about the worst there 
was to be found among the Negroes in their 
particular part of the country. Still he was 
disappointed because he never found anything 
that approached the conditions he was looking 
for, and usually he was compelled to be con- 
tented with the statement, made to him by 
each one of his guides in turn, which ran 
something like this: "Conditions were not near 
as bad as they had been. A few years ago, if 
he had happened to have come that way, he 
would have been able to see things, and so 
forth; but now conditions were improving. 
However, if he wanted to see actual barbarism 
he should visit " — and then they usually named 
some distant part of the country with which 
he had not yet become acquainted. 



388 THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

In this way this gentleman, who was hunting 
the worst that was to be seen among the Negroes, 
as I was hunting the worst that was to be seen 
among the people of Europe, travelled all over 
the Southern States, going from one dark corner 
to another, but never finding things as bad as 
they were advertised. Instead of that, back- 
ward as the people were in many of the remote 
parts of the country, he found, just as I did in 
Europe, that everywhere the people were mak- 
ing progress. In some places they were ad- 
vancing more slowly than they were in others, 
but everywhere there was, on the whole, 
progress rather than decline. The result 
in his case was the same as it had been 
in mine, the farther he went and the more 
he saw of the worst there was to see, the 
more hopeful he became of the people as a 
whole. 

I saw much that was primitive and much 
that was positively evil in the conditions in 
Europe, but nowhere did I find things as bad 
as they were described to me by persons who 
knew them as they were some years before. 
And I found almost no part of the country in 
which substantial progress had not been made; 
no place, in short, where the masses of the 
people were without hope. 

It will, perhaps, seem curious to many persons 



THE FUTURE 389 

that, after I had gone to Europe for the express 
purpose of making the acquaintance of the 
people at the bottom, and of seeing, as far as I 
was able, the worst in European life, I should 
have returned with a hopeful rather than a pessi- 
mistic view of what I saw. 

The fact is, however, that the farther I 
travelled in Europe, and the more I entered 
into the life of the people at the bottom, the 
more I found myself looking at things from the 
point of view of the people who are looking up, 
rather than from that of the people who are at 
the top looking down, and, strange as it may 
seem, it is still true that the world looks, on 
the whole, more interesting, more hopeful, and 
more filled with God's providence, when you 
are at the bottom looking up than when you are 
at the top looking down. 

To the man in the tower the world below 
him is likely to look very small. Men look like 
ants and all the bustle and stir of their hurrying 
lives seems pitifully confused and aimless. But 
the man in the street who is looking and striving 
upward is in a different situation. However 
poor his present plight, the thing he aims at 
and is striving toward stands out clear and 
distinct above him, inspiring him with hope 
and ambition in his struggle upward. For the 
man who is down there is always something 



3QO THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN 

to hope for, always something to be gained. 
The man who is down, looking up, may catch a 
glimpse now and then of heaven, but the man 
who is so situated that he can only look down 
is pretty likely to see another and quite dif- 
ferent place. 



THE END 




The Country Life Press 
Garden City, N. Y. 



SEP 24 1912 












*<& ^f> 










X 5 






